Do No Harm
by OyHumbug
Summary: With a past she fears nipping at her heels, Doctor Tara Knowles runs to the small town of Charming, California where she hopes that she'll be able to hide from the things, from the people, who haunt her, not realizing that, though quaint, Charming is home to its own brand of violence and danger.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Do No Harm  
**Rating**: Mature  
**Disclaimer**: I own neither the characters presented in this story nor the show from which they originate. Unfortunately.  
**Summary**: With a past she fears nipping at her heels, Doctor Tara Knowles runs to the small town of Charming, California where she hopes that she'll be able to hide from the things, from the people, who haunt her, not realizing that, though quaint, Charming is home to its own brand of violence and danger.  
**Characters**: Tara Knowles, Jax Teller, Abel Teller, Gemma Teller-Morrow, Wendy Teller, Clay Morrow, David Hale, Wayne Unser, June Stahl, Tig Trager, Joshua Kohn, Opie Winston, Piney Winston  
**Genre**: Drama, Angst, Romance  
**Status**: In-progress (1/13)  
**_A/N_**_: It's amazing what can be inspired by a single moment. I had this vision of Tara washing the blood off of Jax in 1x01 rather than telling him to clean himself up, and, from that visual, this entire story was created. In it, Jax and Tara have never met before, so she's unfamiliar with Charming, the club, and everything the two entail. They becomes acquainted through Abel, because Tara is his surgeon. So, essentially, this is a S1 rewrite, re-imagining what might have been without their history influencing the story. Especially towards the beginning of this fic, Jax and Tara will be reacting to the events that take place around them, events that will be familiar from the show, but, eventually, the slight differences that their new association create will drastically change what occurred on screen. Also, keep in mind that, without their past relationship with each other, Jax and Tara are slightly different characters. I won't tell you how; I'll allow you to see for yourselves, but, hopefully, given how I've changed their backstory, these differences will make sense. On one final note, I tend to write ahead, so I'm actually already finished with chapter seven of this thirteen part story, so you don't have to worry about it going unfinished. Thanks and, as always, enjoy!_

~Charlynn~

**Do No Harm**

**Chapter One**

As Dr. Tara Knowles made her way quickly through the halls of St. Thomas, she did her best to review her patient's file. Given the family's history of CHD, she would have preferred to have had a few days to thoroughly study their past cases. Turning the corner, her feet greedily eating up the last few floor tiles that separated her from the OR, she noted that the father and grandmother survived the condition, though the grandmother also eventually needed open heart surgery, but that an uncle and great uncle had died from complications due to the defect. This, in and of itself, would have been dangerous enough, but the child was preterm at only 30 weeks, and the EMT's had called in on their way, the mother having apparently overdosed. Tara had no idea what she was about to encounter when she stepped into that operating room, but her few minutes of reviewing the case would have to suffice.

She wasn't losing that baby.

"Excuse me?"

Skidding to a stop, her utilitarian tennis shoes squeaking along the highly polished and waxed hospital floors, Tara pivoted to find a cop watching her expectantly. He was young... probably her age, and he had that clean cut, boy scout look to him. Not wasting time even considering who he was or what he wanted, she gestured vaguely down the hallway towards the surgical floor's information desk. "If you go that way, a nurse will be able to help you find whomever you're looking for."

"Actually, I'm here about an investigation."

"And I'm here to save lives," Tara returned shortly, already turning her back on the police officer. She pushed her way through the swinging doors, tensing when she heard the stranger follow.

"I need some information about Wendy Teller. She was just brought in – an apparent overdose. When will her toxicology results be back? It's extremely important that I am immediately informed when they come in, and I'm going to need constant..."

"Look, Barney Fife," Tara cracked, interrupting the officer. Reaching the door that led into the scrub room, she spun around to face him. His face was pinched with irritation. She didn't have the patience, nor was she concerned about offending him. "I really don't care what you need. I don't have time for this."

"By denying me the information I need, you could be impeding a potential criminal case. And it's Deputy Chief Hale."

She really didn't care what his name was. "And you _are_ preventing me from tending to a definite medical emergency."

When the officer's face relaxed into a smile, Tara went on even higher alert. "You're a good doctor. I can tell."

"Surgeon," she corrected automatically.

"And I'm a good cop," he pressed on, undaunted. "Or, at least, I'm trying to be, but I need for you to cooperate with me. I don't recognize you, so I'm guessing you're new in town, but that woman is Jax Teller's wife, the second in command and heir to the throne of our local motorcycle club problem. If Wendy Teller did overdose, that means that she endangered her child, and her husband did nothing to prevent the situation. I can use that by either threatening the child's mother with charges or by trying to take custody away from the father. That kind of leverage is just what I need to take down Samcro, our very own Sons of Anarchy charter."

Without blinking, Tara stared down the deputy chief. "I don't know anything about this motorcycle club, and I have no idea what went down between you and my patient's father to make you so jealous of him that you would be willing to risk a child's life in order to one up this guy, and, frankly, I don't care. When I get into that OR, I'm calling security, and they're going to be instructed to escort you from this building." Scoffing at his badge, she ridiculed, "That piece of tin pinned on your chest means nothing to me. Leave, stay away from my patient, or I will file a complaint with your superior officer."

Before the self-righteous prick could say another word, she slipped inside of the scrub room, resenting the fact that the door was automatic, and she couldn't slam it shut behind her.

…

She didn't even have her scrub cap off yet when she heard a loud voice, yet again, assaulting St. Thomas' hallways. The good news? It wasn't that obtuse, obnoxious deputy back for round two. The bad news? As the demanding woman popped a hip, angling her body in Tara's direction so that she could have a better view of the brash visitor, she knew exactly who she was looking at: Gemma Teller-Morrow, the grandmother of her premie patient. The bold scar down the older woman's chest was all the introduction Tara needed.

Sighing, she pulled the protective covering from her hair and quickly made her way towards the crowd which had gathered in front of the nurses' station. Apparently, Gemma Teller-Morrow traveled with an entourage – a very loud, very leather accented entourage. Discreetly, she took in the group of men, wondering silently to herself just which one was the father of baby boy Teller. Typically, Tara would have automatically dismissed several of the men, because, underneath the drug-induced damage, Wendy Teller was an attractive woman. Reason stood that her husband would be attractive, too, yet, even a stranger to motorcycle clubs as she was, Tara instinctively knew that the relationships just didn't work that way.

She also instinctively knew that dealing with Gemma Teller-Morrow was a headache she neither wanted nor needed.

"Listen, I want you to get off your fat, lazy ass and find me some god damned information about my..."

Clearing her throat, Tara interrupted the rude diatribe. "Excuse me, but I'm looking for Mr. Teller."

The older woman scoffed, pivoting in her heels to fully face Tara – a finely sculpted eyebrow raised in challenge. "Who the hell are you."

"I'm Doctor Tara Knowles," she began, shoving her scrub cap into one of the pockets of her lab coat before holding out a hand in introduction.

The gesture was not reciprocated, however. "Sweetheart, I wasn't asking." Slowly, she allowed her hand to fall back down to her side. "I know you must be new around here, because I've never seen you before, but I'm not the welcoming wagon, so go find somebody else's hand..."

"Mom, stop it," a male voice interrupted, stepping forward. Tara eyed him closely. So, _this_ was Jackson Teller. She should have stuck with her original assumption; he was good looking – bright blue eyes, nice lips, and perhaps the longest, pale blonde eyelashes she had ever seen. He had hair to his chin and facial hair which usually wasn't her taste, but, on him, it worked. The unkept look seemed to fit the idea of a motorcycle club's second in command. But then Tara realized that, for a good thirty seconds, she had zoned out during her private inspection, and she flushed with embarrassment, glancing away and closing her eyes briefly as she mentally chastised herself. " … not helping anything."

"Mr. Teller, I presume," Tara greeted her patient's father. This time, she didn't hold out her hand. Instead, with both arms, she clutched the chart she held against her chest. "Like I started to say earlier, I'm Doctor Tara Knowles, and I'm your son's surgeon."

"Shit," Gemma Teller-Morrow swore, scoffing in resignation. "He has it, doesn't he – the family flaw?"

"Excuse me?"

The older woman tapped a long, painted nail against the scar upon her chest. "Bad tickers, doc. They run in our family."

"Yes, well...," and then she turned back to the little boy's father. "If you'll come with me, Mr. Teller..."

"It's Jax," he interjected.

" ... we'll sit down in my office, and I'll go over your son's case with you, so we can select a course of treatment."

"Just tell me now," he requested, taking a step closer to her. "Give it to me straight."

"Alright then," Tara agreed. Briefly, she looked around at the many worried gazes fixed in her direction.

"My mom's right, isn't she? It's his heart?"

"Yes, your son was born with a congenital heart defect which is going to require surgery. Under normal circumstances – even with him being ten weeks early, this wouldn't be life-threatening. However, because of the drugs, he was also born with gastroschisis." Tara could see the questions bubbling forth on Gemma Teller-Morrow's lips, so she explained further without prompting. "In layman's terms, he has a tear in his abdomen which will also require surgery. At this point, I want to give him some time to stabilize and gain some strength. The emergency c-section we had to perform in order to save his life put a strain on his system. I'm hoping that, by morning, he'll be strong enough for us to go in and fix his abdomen, and then we'll reassess afterwards to determine the best time to operate on his heart."

"I knew it," Gemma exploded, pivoting around to pace the width of the hallway. "That stupid, junkie whore..."

"Enough," Jax yelled, making his mother jump and Tara inwardly cheer him on. As her patient's father returned his attention to her, he asked, "do you know what she was on?"

"We found track marks all along her hands and feet, and, judging by her condition, it looks like crank. We're still waiting on toxicology reports, however."

"Bitch always liked her meth," Gemma murmured more to herself than to anyone in particular, but she also made sure that it was said loud enough for everyone to hear. "I take it my soon-to-be ex-daughter-in-law made it, then?"

"She did," Tara confirmed. She gestured towards the nurses' station. "I can have one of the nurses show you to her room if you'd like to go and sit with her."

"Haha, funny," Gemma snapped, glaring. "But I wouldn't tempt me, doc, because, if my grandson dies, that bitch will be next."

Taking a deep, calming breath, Tara closed her eyes and shook her head slightly to regroup. Once more centered and focused, she warned, "and I would ask for you to refrain from making threats against patients in this hospital, because, if something were to happen to, say, your daughter-in-law, then I'd be legally obligated to report you to the authorities, and I really don't want to have to deal with that jackass deputy – Hale – again."

From the crowd of bikers, she heard snickers, she heard someone remark 'I like her,' and she heard someone else call dibs. Tara rolled her eyes. _Classy_. "Speaking of Sparky the Sheriff, he was here earlier, asking a lot of questions about your wife and child," she told Jax. "Look, I don't know what kind of bad blood is between the two of you, but he made it very clear that he plans on using Mrs. Teller's overdose to get to you. My guess? He uses it as probable cause to get a search warrant for your house, so, if there's anything there that he shouldn't find, I'd get rid of it."

Gemma came up to stand directly beside her son. "Why are you helping us?"

"Because he also threatened to use this against my patient, against your newborn grandson; because he was pushy and rude, and his behavior interfered with my work; and because he really pissed me off."

As if thinking out loud, Jax admitted, "I have no idea what Wendy might have in the house. I haven't been there in months, haven't seen or heard from her in weeks. She probably has drugs stashed somewhere, though."

"Don't worry, man," one of the other club members stepped forward. "I'll go over and check things out."

"Look in the desk. One of the drawers has a false bottom," Jax told him. And then the other guy was gone, and the father of her patient was facing her once again. His features were tight with tension, with regret and anger – both self and outwardly directed. "This is my fault. I didn't pay enough attention. I had no idea Wendy was even using again." When he finished talking, he lifted both hands to scrub roughly against his face and then back through his hair.

"Nobody did, Mr. Teller... Jax," Tara corrected herself before he could protest. She could see the objection in his eyes. "From what her OB-GYN said, she'd missed her last three appointments, too."

"Right." Briefly biting his lip, Jax shoved his hands into the pockets of his low-slung jeans and then nodded once... as if convincing himself. "So, give it to me straight, doc. What are his chances?"

"The textbooks would tell you _maybe _20%," she started only to be cut off by Jax swearing.

"Shit!" Tara watched as the guilt and fear coloring his face was overcome by anger.

"But that doesn't factor in two things: one, your son..."

"His name's Abel," he quietly announced.

" … is a fighter. Look at what he's already survived. I'm guessing it's a family trait."

"You don't know the half of it, doc," Gemma said proudly. "What's the other thing?"

"I'm _really good_ at my job."

Gemma Teller-Morrow smirked. "You're a cocky little gash, aren't you?"

Tara narrowed her gaze warningly. "I'm going to take that as a compliment, and we'll just leave it at that." Gesturing with Abel's chart over her shoulder, she indicated for Jax to follow her. "If you'll come with me, I'll take you to meet your son, and we can get started on the paperwork for his surgeries, too."

Face full of resolve – jaw ticking, eyes blazing, Jax softly told her, "there's something I have to do first." With that, he turned around and started to leave, some of his fellow club members falling into step behind him. "Gemma said she found a pack of matches from The Hairy Dog, so that must be from where the Nords are dealing."

She didn't know what propelled her forward, but Tara chased after him. "Wait," she called out, and she was almost surprised when he actually stopped and looked over his shoulder in her direction. When she was close enough that, if she wanted to, she could have reached out and touched him, Jax moved so that he was facing her entirely. "Look," Tara started, unsure of what she wanted to say or how she was going to say it but knowing she couldn't just let him walk away without speaking up. "I don't know you, and I know nothing about your club, but I'm not an idiot. You're leaving right now to go and get revenge. And I get that. I do. You're pissed off, and you're scared, and you're feeling all these things but have nowhere to put them right now. But this – avenging your son? You only avenge someone if they're already dead, and Abel is very much alive, and I intend to keep him that way."

For several minutes, Jax just looked at her. Hell, it felt more like he was looking through her – the connection was that strong. Without conscious decision, Tara let down some of her own walls, and he allowed her to see what he was feeling, too. She didn't know what was happening between them, but it was something. And it was real. But then he blinked, and the moment evaporated. Softly, he whispered, "I'll be back later."

She stared after him... even after he was gone. Despite the fact that several of the guys left with Jax, she was still standing amongst a crowd of bikers. And Gemma Teller-Morrow. "Now, how about extending that invitation to meet Abel to his grandma?"

Slowly, Tara circled around to face the older woman. She was exhausted. Between the stress of recently moving and acclimating to a new hospital, her worry for her patient, whatever it was she had just gone through with Jax Teller, and spending more of her nights sleeping in the on-call room than in the room she was renting at the local inn, all she wanted was respite – peace and quiet. Consequently, the last thing she should have been doing was poking a sleeping bear, but that's exactly what she did anyway. "Sure," Tara drawled, smirking. "After his father sees him first, of course."

Before Gemma could respond, Tara walked away, purposefully blocking out all the noise – the rumbling HVAC, hospital pages, the hustle and bustle of medical professionals treating patients, and one irritated, ranting Gemma Teller-Morrow – swirling around her.

…

Technically, Tara was off the clock, and she wasn't on call either. She was perfectly free to go home, but, like many nights, she planned on staying at the hospital. Practically speaking, it would give her a chance to review for surgery the next day – go over other cases, prepare for all contingencies, map out every stitch in her mind's eye long before she ever stepped foot in the operating room. But that wasn't why Tara used her key card to let herself out of the service exit, coming to stand in the cool night air under the orange glow of the loading dock's lights. She brought no case files with her. And it wasn't why she was avoiding leaving St. Thomas either.

The door shut with a soft click behind her, she leaned against it, and sighed. Allowing her eyes to droop shut, Tara attempted to relax, but it was a futile gesture. She was on edge, and, unfortunately, it had nothing to do with either her work or the personal problems that she was doing her best to avoid having to deal with. Rather, she was tense because Jax Teller, despite what he had said, had never come back.

Besides from a purely professional standpoint, she shouldn't care. Sure, his lack of interest in his child meant that she'd have to deal with his overbearing bitch of a mother instead, and chances were eventually Charming's deputy idiot would become involved, too, and, on Abel's behalf, she regretted these things, but that wasn't what was weighing on her, making her incapable of shutting off her mind for even a few hours of much needed and deserved rest. She cared because, despite all the reasons she shouldn't, Tara liked Jax Teller, and she had believed him to be a father who loved his son... if not ill-prepared for parenthood. However, it wouldn't be the first time that her judgement was off. She should have known, too. As soon as she realized she was attracted to him, Tara should have been ready for the disappointment.

"Hey, Doc."

"Jesus Christ," she jumped in fright, jerking her neck at an awkward angle and banging the back of her head against the metal door she was leaning against. Glancing off into the shadows of the night – where the light of the dawn to dusk light couldn't reach, Tara ordered, "don't do that."

"Sorry," Jax Teller apologized, sounding sincere. He came forward, towards her, with both hands outstretched cautiously before his body. "I didn't mean to startle you. Just figured you would have seen and smelled the smoke." Sure enough, he held a lit cigarette loosely in his right hand.

"Wasn't paying much attention," Tara confessed, tilting her head from side to side to work out the kinks in her neck. "There's usually no one out here, especially at this time of night."

Jax nodded, observing her answer, before dropping down to sit on the loading dock, his legs dangling freely over the edge, swinging. "You spend a lot of time out here?" She joined him, keeping a good three feet of space between them. "Smoke?" And he held out a pack of cigarettes towards her. She waved him off. "Yeah. I didn't think so. It doesn't exactly fit with you being a doctor and all."

Tired of the small talk and still feeling stung that she had been so wrong about him, Tara changed the subject. "What are you doing out here, Jax? You should be inside. With your son."

He looked away. She wasn't sure if he was watching something in particular or just avoiding her gaze. She didn't press him and turned away, too. "Visiting hours are over."

"Yeah, well, I've been known to break the rules sometimes, so, if you want to go meet him, I'll take you right now."

He snorted in amusement. "Yeah. I heard. First, giving us the head's up about Hale, and then my mom. She's pissed, you know."

Tara cringed. "Sorry about that."

"Are you really?"

Not even for a moment could Tara feign contrition. "Yeah. Not at all. She pushed my buttons and had it coming."

"Gemma's known for that."

"I am sorry, however, that you had to deal with the fallout. That wasn't fair, not when you already have so much on your plate."

Jax chuckled. "Don't worry about it. You giving Gemma a hard time is good for her."

"And, in the end, no harm, no foul, right, because she got to see Abel. Eventually, a nurse took pity on her and showed her to his room."

"I have a feeling that had more to do with self-preservation than pity," he remarked astutely. "This isn't going to blow back on you; you won't get in trouble?"

"No, I'll be fine," she reassured. And she would be. Even putting aside the extraordinary circumstances of Abel's case... which she could certainly use in her defense if necessary, the hospital administration was no fan of Gemma Teller-Morrow. They resented her attitude and the way that she treated staff members. Plus, Gemma was loud and rude – perhaps the two ultimate sins when it came to hospital etiquette. Nobody would say a word.

"Good." He nodded several times. "That's good." Then, they fell silent. Tara shivered, lifting her hands to rub along her bare arms. Dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, her clothes did little to ward off the chill in the air. "Were you leaving for the night? I could give you a lift home if you need one," Jax offered.

"No, thank you, but I'm staying here tonight. And I have a car... just for future reference."

"Are you staying because of Abel?"

"No, I stay here a lot, because there's no home to go back to," Tara found herself confessing, surprising herself with how frank she was being with her patient's father. And she needed to remember that – that Jax Teller was only sitting there talking to her because she was his son's surgeon. Nothing more. "I rent a room at the bed and breakfast here in town, but it's mainly a place to keep my stuff."

"Sounds like you're hiding from something, Doc. Or running."

Taken aback – both by his forwardness and by how accurate his easy assumption was, Tara bit out, "excuse me?"

But Jax didn't show any rancor towards her surly tone. "I own a place, but, for months now, I've been staying at the club – in a room we call the bunkhouse. I'd rather hide out there in a room that smells like dirty laundry and even dirtier pussy..."

Tara nearly choked on her shocked bark of laughter. "Oh my god, you're kidding me."

"Hey, we're a motorcycle club. We're not exactly known for our domestic skills."

She lifted a hand, resting it against her mouth and nose as she hid a smile and shook her head in part exasperation and part humor. "I'm sorry. Go on."

"Anyway, there are some nights that I don't even go back to the clubhouse; I stay out on my bike until morning. And I do this because it's easier than having to go to the place that reminds me of all my failures. I'm running from a marriage to a woman I don't love and a kid I'm not ready for, one that I'm not even sure I ever wanted; and I'm hiding from my own cowardice, because I don't know how to fix any of it." Jax became quiet as he allowed time for his words to sink in. "So, I know what it looks like, Doc, and you're either hiding or running from something... maybe even both."

Perhaps he wasn't avoiding his son entirely... at least, not in the way she had first thought, and perhaps there was something happening between them – some kind of connection, but that didn't mean that Tara felt comfortable baring her soul to the man sitting next to her. At the same time, however, she wouldn't insult his honesty with lies. So, finally, shrugging, she responded, "everybody has a past."

"So, tell me something about yours." When she remained silent, he suggested, "why did you want to be a doctor?"

"At first it was because people told me I couldn't be one," Tara answered. This, unlike what she was running _and _hiding from, she could tell him. "I don't know if you've noticed this about me yet, but I can be slightly obstinate. Willful."

Straight faced, Jax replied, "you don't say."

And she rolled her eyes at his teasing. "My mom was sick, and she died when I was young, and my dad drank himself to death shortly afterwards. I had a second cousin who took me in rather than having to go into the foster care system, but, as soon as I was eighteen, I was on my own. I wasn't supposed to amount to anything, and that just made me more determined to prove everybody wrong. Becoming a surgeon seemed to be the best way to do just that. So, I worked hard, got a full ride, studied my ass off, and eventually became the rock star of my residency class in Chicago."

"So, you became a doctor out of spite?"

"Initially," Tara allowed, "but it became more than that the first time I actually worked with a patient. Then, it became about making sure that even the children born under the worst of circumstances are given a chance to live, to be loved, to be told that they can be anything they want to be."

"Kids like Abel," he mused out loud. It wasn't something either of them needed her to respond to. "Chicago, huh? What the hell are you doing in Charming, Doc?"

Running _and _hiding, Tara answered his question silently to herself. Despite this, she was fairly confident that everything would still work out with her career. Luckily, she had been well into her residency by the time she left Chicago, and she'd already studied under a neonatal attending for more than two years. She could take that training and combine it with the rest of her residency at St. Thomas and still declare neonatal surgery as her specialty. In the meantime, because of St. Thomas' size, they didn't have a neonatal surgeon, so, with more experience in the field than any of her superiors, she was given all the applicable surgeries... including Abel Teller's.

"Like I said before, everybody has a past." Turning to better face the man beside her, Tara pulled her legs up and folded them underneath her. "Is that what's bothering you about Abel, why you won't go and see him – because I'm young, and a stranger, and you'd feel more comfortable with a different surgeon – someone with more experience?"

"No, you told me you were great at your job, and I trust you," Jax reassured her. "Plus, you kind of scare the shit out of me, and that's good, too." For some reason, Tara felt like he was talking about more than just her surgical skills and medical proficiency, but, before she could even begin to sort through her thoughts, Jax was talking once again. "I can't go and see him, because, if I do, then I'm going to get attached, and I mean no disrespect to you, Doc, but what's the point of getting attached to my kid when he's probably just going to die anyway?"

Tara angled her head to the side in observation. She smiled softly. And then she stood up. Looking down upon Jax, his head rocked back to gaze up at her, she told him, "your fear of losing your son means that you're already in love with him." He didn't say anything, but she watched as he swallowed roughly, his throat constricting with the effort. He blinked several times, moisture making his eyes glassy under the orange light. Reaching into her back pocket, Tara pulled out a business card, handing it to him. "It has my personal number on it, too. Call me anytime you have questions – day or night – or whenever you're ready to meet your son."

"I'll, uh," Jax paused, regrouped. "I'll send you a text so that you'll have my number as well. I'm not sure what Wendy has listed in her file, but this way you'll be able to get in touch with me if... just in case. And I'll be by in the morning to sign the release papers for Abel's surgeries."

"Good," Tara agreed before turning around and walking back towards the doors of the service entrance. Just as she was about to swipe her ID to get back in, she paused, looking back over one of her shoulders. Jax was knocking out another cigarette, slipping it between his lips. "Hey, if you're going to stay here all night, even if you're not ready to see Abel yet, at least come inside. Sleep on one of the couches."

"Is that where you sleep, Doc – on one of the couches?"

"No, I sleep in the on-call room," she told him indulgently. "We have bunk beds."

He then completely took her by surprise when he asked, "want to share?"

Tara responded with the first thing she could think of. "That certainly would not be very professional."

Jax grinned crookedly. "That wasn't a no."

"It also wasn't an invitation either." As he brought a lighter up to his mouth, Tara swiped her ID card, jerking open one of the doors after a soft buzz of admittance. "Goodnight, Mr. Teller."

"Goodnight, Tara."

The way he said her name made Tara hyper-aware, brought goosebumps to her skin. They were still there when she crawled under the blankets of her bunk in the on-call room fifteen minutes later.

…

"You want to tell me why the hell I found this in my son's pants' pocket this morning?"

Tara eyed the business card – _her _business card, ripped in two, laying on the counter before where she was filling in a chart. She was standing at the nurses' station, and, like a bad penny, Gemma Teller-Morrow was back. She didn't rush to answer the older woman's question, however. Instead, she finished the note she had been making before set upon, and she noisily clicked off her pen, placing it in one of her lab coat's pockets. The card she never touched.

Quirking a pointed, curious brow in Gemma's direction, she volleyed back, "only if you tell me why you're still doing your 30 year old son's laundry?"

"T_ouché_," Gemma returned, somehow managing to frown and smirk at the same time.

"But, for your information, I give my business card to all of my patients' parents."

"Do you always give out your personal number, too, Doc?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Tara answered. Noticing that they were starting to attract a few curious glances, she motioned for Gemma to follow her down the hall. The older woman rolled her eyes but did as she was bid, snatching up the ripped business card first. Tara, in turn, grabbed her chart. As they walked, she further explained, "because I'm a neonatal surgeon, my patients are almost always critical. I need to be able to get in touch with their parents day and night, and the same applies in reverse as well. Sometimes I'm not near a hospital phone, and sometimes parents have questions when I'm off-duty." Unable to simply allow the censure upon her professionalism to pass by without a smart retort, Tara snapped, "I'm surprised that you don't find this comforting. Jax did."

"Oh," Gemma pounced, stopping in the middle of the hallway. They weren't quite to Abel's NICU room yet. She grabbed Tara's arm, spinning her around so that they were face to face. "So, it's Jax now, is it?"

"He asked me to call him that. Remember? And besides," Tara added, wrenching her arm free, "even _when_ Abel's surgeries are a success, he'll still be a very sick baby. At ten weeks premature, he's going to be here – in his hospital, under my care – for the next couple of months. During that time, your son and I are going to be spending a lot of time together. It's just natural, and it makes things a little easier when the doctor and the family can get along." Before Gemma could respond, she took a deep breath and plunged forward. "With that in mind, you should keep that card... just in case you ever need to get in touch with me."

"How generous of you. Is this your way of apologizing for yesterday – for trying to keep me from my grandson?"

Tilting her chin up a notch, for Gemma was taller than she was, especially since it seemed like the older woman was always wearing heels, Tara countered, "I don't regret anything."

But Gemma just grinned maliciously. "Oh, I get it. Jax gave you shit about how you treated me, didn't he?"

"Actually, no." And to twist the knife just that much deeper, she added, "in fact, we talked for quite a while last night, and your name barely came up."

"Just as long as that talk was professional and not personal, we won't have a problem."

Tara narrowed her eyes as she observed the territorial woman across from her. "If you have something to say to me, Mrs. Teller-Morrow..."

"For you, just Mrs. Teller will do," Gemma interrupted.

_That_ was interesting... and certainly worthy of further examination but at a later and much more private date. " … then just come right out and say it. Quit with the passive-aggressive routine already."

"Alright fine," Gemma agreed, taking a step forward so that they were almost touching. The move forced Tara to tip her head back even further. "Stay away from my son. You're Abel's doctor. You update him about his son's case. But that's it."

While she had no intention of crossing that line – for many reasons, Tara didn't like being told what she could and could not do. "And if I don't?"

"Well, then, I wouldn't get too comfortable if I were you."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning... you're an outsider. You came strutting into this town with your fancy degree and your big-city attitude, and you just expected everyone to kiss your ass because you're a surgeon. Well," the older woman scoffed. "Charming doesn't work like that."

"I don't know," she drawled, rolling her eyes. "The majority of the people I've met have been nice enough so far."

"Oh, sure. At first, we'll kill you with kindness, and, eventually, we might come to accept you. You'll never be one of us, but you won't be against us either. But cross me, and I'll run your conceited doctor pussy right out of town." Gemma's eyebrows hiked mockingly. "If you're lucky."

Tucking the chart she was holding against her chest, Tara folded her arms across it. "You don't scare me." But she was starting to think that maybe she scared Gemma Teller-Morrow. "Wife of the local motorcycle club's president or not..." – And, yes, since they had met the day before, Tara had done her research. " … you're just an old lady. The only way that I'm leaving this town is if I want to, and, frankly, your opinion on the matter means shit to me."

"Listen up, Doc," Gemma retaliated, leaning forward so as to intimidate her. It forced Tara to take a step backwards, but the older woman just followed until the point where Tara was braced against the wall. "You wouldn't be the first bitch in heat after my son that I've gotten rid of, and you won't be..."

"Take. A. Walk," a hard, cold voice said from beside them. Tara glanced to the left out of the corner of her eyes. She couldn't help but smile softly.

"Hey, baby," Gemma greeted her son, immediately calming and changing her tone. She went from arctic to simpering in seconds. "Are you here to see Abel?" Tara watched as the older woman approached Jax, tried to take his arm, but had her touch shrugged off. "We can go together."

"I heard what you said to Tara."

"Tara," Gemma echoed, her glare ricocheting towards Tara over her shoulder for a split second before disappearing when looking at her son once again.

"And I can't deal with your insecure shit right now, so just back off, and leave her alone."

"Alright, I'm sorry, Jackson." In Tara's estimation, there wasn't a remorseful bone in Gemma Teller-Morrow's body. "Now, can we just go and see your son?"

"You go. I need to talk to Tara for a minute."

Gemma's mouth pursed - a sign that she was unhappy and that she wanted to say something else but was refraining from doing so. Finally, with a pinched expression and a tight nod, she turned around and moved further down the hallway.

Once they were alone, Tara spoke for the first time. "Sorry about that. I really didn't try to provoke her this time... at least, not much, but we apparently push _each other's_ buttons."

Jax astonished her when all he said in response was, "you handle her well." If she wasn't mistaken, Tara detected an impressed flavor to his words.

"Thanks?"

Jax smiled, nodded. "So, how's the kid?"

"He's holding his own. I have his stomach surgery scheduled for later this morning. Afterwards, we'll assess his condition and determine when it's best to go in and operate on his heart."

"I, uh," as he spoke, he lifted a hand to rub against the long scruff along his right cheek. Tara watched as the overhead lights got caught on his large, garish rings. She assumed they were related to his club. "I stopped by the nurses' station to ask where you were, and they had the consent forms for Abel's surgeries. I signed them."

"That's good."

"And you'll keep me posted," he requested, wincing slightly, she realized, because he wasn't planning on staying all day at the hospital. "I have some things I need to do today. For the club. My mom will be here if you need anything, and I'll be back as soon as I can, but..."

"I'll send you updates via text messages," Tara found herself promising. It wasn't what she wanted from him; she wanted for Jax to finally break down and be the father she knew he could be, but it was progress. She recognized that and decided to meet him halfway. "And I promise to play nice with your mother, too."

Jax chuckled, stepping forward so that he was directly in front of her. While he was crowding and looking down upon her much like his mother had just been, his actions were certainly not meant to intimidate. Tara wasn't sure what he intended by standing so close to her, but he was the first man to do so in a long time that didn't make her want to run or hide.

There were those words again...

"Don't go getting all soft on me now, Tara," Jax playfully admonished.

She returned his smile. "Wouldn't dream of it."

With one last nod, Jax stepped back, then away. "I'll see you later."

And then he was gone.

…

Tara was happy when she saw him.

And it wasn't because, when he arrived, she was already in an euphoric state due to Abel's surgeries going well, his favorable prognosis, and the fact that Gemma Teller-Morrow had gone home for the evening – all of which were true, but because _he _was there.

The realization made Tara pause, her steps coming to a faltering end. What she was thinking, what she was feeling was impossible, and improper, and incredible. It was too soon. Yet, logic did not detract from the truth of her body's reactions. Her heart rate was elevated, she had that intense anticipatory feelings swirling through her stomach – that one that doctors still couldn't explain, and the corners of her lips were tilted up into a shy yet oh-so-genuine smile.

And Jax? He fairly stalked towards her – his movements resolute, his gaze never straying from her face. She searched him for any sign of what he was feeling, needing to know if he was merely there for his son or if he, too – as ridiculous as it was – wanted to see her as well. His face, however, gave nothing away... or perhaps she just didn't know him well enough to read through the walls he kept his emotions locked behind. What Tara did notice, however, was that, despite his determination, there was a tenseness to his walk, a tightness – one that had not been there when he had left the hospital that morning.

Before she could fully grasp what that rigidity meant, though, he was suddenly there, surrounding her. Jax wrapped his arms around her torso, pulling her into and against his body, and Tara found herself returning the embrace – a slight gasp she couldn't hide escaping when Jax dipped his face into the crook between her neck and shoulder. He breathed against her bare skin. It was intimate – far more intimate than what was appropriate, but, for a second, for a minute, Tara allowed herself to melt into him. It had been so long since someone had touched her in such a way; it had been so long since she had wanted someone to touch in her such a way.

Although Jax whispered a sincere "thank you" against the shell of her ear, their embrace had nothing to do with gratitude or even a budding friendship. It was too desperate, too intense. She could feel longing in his touch – a sense of need, and want, and desire, but there was also an underlying note of reassurance – his or hers, she wasn't sure – and a whisper of fear. For a brief moment, Tara felt like the hug was Jax's way of convincing himself he was still alive, but that thought was ludicrous.

… Or at least it was until they slowly, regretfully pulled away from each other, and she noticed the blood on her scrubs and lab coat, on the t-shirt peeking out from beneath his kutte and jacket. "Oh my god. Jax?" Worried, Tara lifted her hands to rest upon his chest, her fingers stilling over the zipper of his sweatshirt. She wasn't sure if she should expose him for an examination or further cover up what he obviously didn't want anyone to see.

"It's okay," he tried to reassure her. "I'm fine."

The glare she leveled upon him was a mixture of reproach and trepidation, of alarm. "You're obviously not fine, Jax."

He had the audacity to smile, though the gesture was tinted with grief. "No, you don't understand. Tara, it's not..."

"Shut up," she cut him off, finally realizing where they were standing – out in the open in a very public hallway with security cameras and hospital personnel watching them. He didn't seem to mind her interruption or her rude command. Jax did, however, raise a brow in question. "Not here," she explained. "We're too exposed." Allowing her hands to slide down his chest – an unconsciously personal gesture, Tara laced the fingers of her right hand with his right, turning around so that she could lead him away, her arm twisted and angled behind her back, but it kept Jax closer to her, her own body shielding his as much as possible. "Come with me," she directed. And he followed without objection.

Tara debated where to take him. A restroom was too public, and she wouldn't have access to any medical supplies or equipment, but a hospital room meant they took the risk of someone questioning why she was treating him when he hadn't been admitted. The on-call room, however, was private, and there would at least be some rudimentary first-aid supplies there... along with a change of clothing for both of them. Because St. Thomas wasn't a trauma hospital, and Charming was a small town, most of the doctors preferred to go home when they weren't on-call or working. Often, this meant that Tara had the on-call room to herself.

As she let them into the staff-only space, she locked the door behind them, grateful when the room proved to be empty. Wordlessly, she moved them into the en-suite bathroom, only letting go of Jax's hand once they came to a stop beside the sinks. Facing him, she lifted her hands to release the zipper of his sweatshirt, the sound of the metal teeth separating magnified by the otherwise still and silent room. Once the jacket was completely open, Jax relaxed his shoulders, allowing his kutte and the coat to fall to the floor.

Biting her bottom lip, Tara avoided looking at his face, instead choosing to focus upon the task at hand. She trailed her fingers over his blood splattered and stained t-shirt, astonished when she found it mostly dry. He didn't seem to have any open wounds. Confused, she finally met his gaze. What she found was a remorseful yet torn Jax. When he spoke, she could hear the regret coloring his words. She just wasn't sure if he regretted having to tell her or he regretted what he had to tell her. "Like I started to tell you before, it's not mine."

"I don't understand." She searched his eyes, and then she searched his chest and abdomen, and then she remembered watching him walk towards her what had inconceivably been just minutes before. His tenseness, the tightness of his movements, they had screamed of pain... or, at least, she thought they had. Perhaps it had been emotional, not physical. Catching his gaze once more, she breathed out her realization. "Oh."

Jax nodded and then turned away, positioning it so that he was facing the mirror and she was off to the side and slightly behind him. He turned on the water, and then he took off his shirt, making Tara choke on a sob. Automatically, her fingers lifted to trace the two round bruises on his back. He stiffened slightly, but he didn't pull away. Over and over again, she whispered her touch against his sensitive flesh. She hadn't lived and worked in Chicago for years not to recognize what she was looking at: bullet wounds, only he was still standing before her because he had been wearing a bullet-proof vest.

Looking up into the mirror, she watched him as he watched her. "But it could have been." And she was self-aware enough to realize that, whether it made her a hypocrite or not, she was glad the blood he wore was somebody else's and not his own.

Wordlessly, Tara crossed the room and removed several washcloths, a towel, and a new bar of soap from the linen closet. Putting her supplies down on the countertop, she tested the water to make sure it was warm before soaking one of the washcloths. Wringing the excess liquid out, she then lifted it to Jax's back, slowly and methodically wiping away every single trace of blood. Next, she took the soap and worked it into a lather, covering his skin with the sudsy bubbles before wetting the second cloth and repeating the process, the second time removing the soap. Once his back was clean, she worked on his sides – first the right and then the left – until, finally, she had Jax turn and face her so she could wash his neck, chest, and torso where the majority of the blood had soaked through his clothes. Before she could begin, though, he stopped her, covering her hands with his own and holding them together between their two bodies.

"Why?" When she just looked at him with a mouth pursed and brow furrowed in confusion, he expanded upon his question. "Why are you helping me? Why aren't you turning me in? How can you even look at me right now?"

Tara tiled her head to the side, weighing her words carefully before addressing his concerns. She didn't want to speak in haste, and it wasn't something that was easy to put into words exactly. "I'm not one to judge, Jax. The things I've seen, the things I've done, the things that have been done to me..." She paused, ran her teeth over her bottom lip. "People aren't just good or bad. A badge doesn't stop someone from being evil, and a criminal can be more than just his or her crimes. I don't understand it," Tara confessed, shaking her head slightly and shrugging her shoulders, "but I trust you.

With a gentle squeeze of her fingers, he promised her, "someday, you're going to tell me what happened to you." But then he let go of her hands, and she returned to cleaning off the blood. When Jax started talking – his voice quiet in introspection yet strong in its confession, she was surprised, but she didn't say or do anything to interrupt. She had a feeling that Jax needed to talk to someone, and she was glad that he was confiding in her.

"Sometimes I don't understand what it is we're doing anymore. Somebody steals our guns and blows up our warehouse? I get sending a message. We got our guns back, and we were going to retaliate by returning the favor and blowing up one of their strongholds. But that wasn't enough for Clay... even if offing those Mayans provokes a war." Jax scoffed, and she glanced up to see him looking into the distance, no doubt reliving the night he had just experienced. "Or I don't know. Maybe it was all about teaching me some kind of lesson."

"What do you mean?"

He looked at her then, forehead creased with worry and doubt. "Another one of the guys, my best friend, he just got out after five years up in Stockton, and his wife? She wants him to go legit, to give up the club, and he's torn. So, I gave him an out tonight, and I told Clay that I could handle wiring up the building myself." Jax shook his head, laughed in scorn at himself. "I messed up, though, made a mistake, and Clay was pissed. He probably figured out I was covering for Ope, too. But anyway, to make up for it, he wanted me to _fix _the situation, then _finish it_, but the guy was already down, Tara. There was no reason to shoot him again."

"Did you?"

He looked up before shuttering his gaze from her. "No. He died before I could. Before I had to." She didn't know what to say to comfort him, to soothe his concern, and remorse, and grief, and apprehension. But maybe she didn't have to say anything; maybe just listening was enough. "I've shot people before. Some of them have died. But it's always been shoot or be shot; they're never defenseless... not like tonight." Sighing, Jax opened his eyes and stared into her own. "Nothing feels right; nothing makes sense."

Finally, she knew what she could do for him. "That's where you're wrong." Leaving him temporarily, Tara snagged a pair of scrubs from a male colleague's locker, handing them to Jax before leaving the bathroom. Without instruction, he changed, and then he rejoined her out in the on-call room. She quickly bagged up his clothes but, for the moment, left them in her locker. Taking his right hand in her own right again, she turned around and led them back out into the hospital hallway. "Come with me." And he did.

Eventually, they stopped in front of Abel's NICU room. "This feels right," she told him, smiling. "This makes sense." Nodding towards the tiny baby inside the incubator before them, she said, "Jax, meet your son." When he looked at her, there were unshed tears in his bright, blue eyes. Perhaps the stress and anxiety of the night were still with him, but there was also a new sense of contentment as well. "Go on," Tara encouraged. "Go inside."

She went to let go of his hand, but he just held on tighter, uttering a single word. "Stay."

And she did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Wendy Teller had overdosed the night before.

Or, perhaps, someone had attempted to murder her.

The jury – i.e. the hospital review board – was out. They were still investigating. Crank again, the woman claimed that she had a friend slip the drugs inside to her, but the dosage had been too large for an addict to be merely looking for a high, and Wendy had not seemed suicidal when interviewed by psych. However, there was going to be one person who wasn't surprised by the overdose – the same person who referred to her own daughter-in-law as a junkie whore.

Gemma Teller-Morrow.

Abel's grandmother was angry, and she had made it abundantly clear that she would do anything to protect her family. She already hated Wendy for risking Abel's life. If she believed the addict to be a continuing risk to her grandson's safety and health or even a risk to Jax in retaining sole custody, then Tara had no doubt that Gemma would be willing to kill. After all, she had threatened Tara for _talking _to Jax; she'd hate to think how Gemma would treat the woman who had taken her son away by marrying him. And Gemma certainly had the means and opportunity as well. Money was no object, and, if ever there was someone who knew how to get what she wanted – illegal drugs included, it would be Gemma Teller-Morrow.

All of this was important for Tara to remember when dealing with the Tellers, but Wendy's overdose had served as a wake-up call of a whole different sort as well. While Abel's mother had been shooting herself full of poison, Tara had been a few hallways away, sitting beside Abel's father as he met his son for the first time. While someone had slipped the syringe into Wendy's hospital room, Tara had been washing blood off Jax. It had been less than 48 hours since she had helped to deliver Jax and Wendy Teller's premature son, yet Tara had all but forgotten the wife and mother in their little family equation. Wendy's near death had brought that fact back into startling clarity.

It wasn't that she felt guilty. A hug did not an adulterer make. Plus, the marriage was over. They were getting divorced, and she didn't doubt Jax's sincerity when he told her, in not so many words, that the marriage had been a mistake from the very beginning. What she did need reminded of, however, was that his life was quite complicated, and she couldn't just forget about those less than pleasant details in favor of... whatever it was that was happening between them. It also helped her recall that she had her own baggage as well.

"You look worried." Tara glanced up from the chart she had been staring blankly at for several minutes, though she didn't lift her head. Unfortunately, she recognized that overzealous voice. "I take it you heard about the bodies of the two women we found this morning."

"Surgeons typically don't take too many shifts in the morgue, so no."

"Oh, well..." She heard the creaking of his shoes and gun holster as he shifted restlessly. "They're connected to that arson case – the one at the gun warehouse."

Sighing in resignation, Tara flipped the chart closed. Yet, she didn't stand up from where she sat behind the information desk, and she certainly did nothing to suggest she wanted the conversation to continue. Folding her hands primly in front of her, she finally met the cop's eyes. "What exactly do you want, Deputy Chief Hale?"

"Look, I know that you and I didn't exactly start out on the right foot."

"You put my patient's life in even more danger."

Hale cleared his throat and glanced away before seemingly changing the subject. "You're new in town. Nobody knows you. But I don't want you to be afraid."

"Frankly," Tara rolled her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Those dead bodies – those women," he explained, nodding his head once in conviction. "They weren't residents of Charming. We would know, but no one has been reported missing. So, they were just passing through or were new – like you."

"Deputy Chief, I can't tell if you're threatening me or trying to reassure me."

"It's not a threat, Ma'am," he stated emphatically.

"It's Doctor Knowles," Tara corrected.

"I just don't want you to fear that you'll be next. We're on top of this," Hale promised. "They're not going to get away with this – not this time."

"Wait," she leaned back and held up her hands in disbelief. "Are you telling me that Charming PD is operating under the assumption that these women were murdered?"

"Well, they are dead."

"But wouldn't it also make sense, if – oh, I don't know – say, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Arson makes it a homicide, but it doesn't necessarily make it first degree murder."

"When it comes to Samcro," he growled. "It's always the wrong place and the wrong time."

Tara took a slow, calming breath. "So, let me get this straight: you think that the Sons of Anarchy are responsible for torching this suspected gun warehouse?"

"It's not just suspected. We found more weapons and ammo at the site than a sporting goods store would have, and it's been long known that Samcro runs and deals in guns."

She knew that she was purposefully being obtuse, because it didn't take a genius to figure out Hale blamed everything and anything that went wrong in Charming on the MC, but Tara simply couldn't swallow his vendetta-hued explication of the evidence without pointing out his hypocrisy. "Oh, then they're the victims here? It was their building that was set on fire?"

Hale chuckled humorlessly. "Samcro is never the victim."

"Well, I don't know." Tara shrugged her shoulders and smiled innocently. "It sounds to me like they're at the least the victim of law enforcement harassment."

"Something you're an expert on, right?"

She stiffened, her shoulders becoming rigid. Tara could feel the blood drain from her face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Charming's Deputy Chief smirked. "Did you really think that I wouldn't run your name after our last run-in?"

"You mean the day we met? Are you always this suspicious?"

"I am when someone defends Samcro."

Finally standing up, Tara leaned against the information desk and stared directly at Hale through the sliding glass window. "My animosity towards you had nothing to do with who Abel Teller's family is and everything to do with you preventing me from treating my patient because of your petty rivalry with his father."

"Yet, you're still defending him."

"Oh, you mean I'm pointing out the fact that you can't have it both ways, Deputy Chief? The Sons of Anarchy can't be the owners of the _suspected_ gun warehouse _and _those responsible for torching it."

"Ever heard of insurance fraud," he suggested smugly.

"Yes, because I'm sure burning down some shack in the woods for the insurance money would be more profitable than a hypothetical gun business."

"Think what you want, _Doctor_," he told her patronizingly, holding his hands out in front of him as he backed away. "Somehow, those two women – _strangers _to Charming – were connected to Samcro, and now they're dead. You're a stranger, and you're connected to Samcro. I know, at first, they can draw you in. The bikes, the leather, the tattoos, the guns, the absolute lack of respect for authority – it makes you think that they'll be able to protect you when the cops can't. But the Sons of Anarchy are dangerous. And I just don't want to see another innocent life – your life – taken too soon."

Disgusted, fed up, and tired of the man's broken record, Tara stood up straight and apathetically said, "I'm just Abel Teller's surgeon."

"Do you always stay in your patient's hospital room with his father all night, Doctor Knowles?"

Narrowing her gaze in accusation, Tara asked, "are you following me?"

"Nah, not you," Hale answered. Meaning, he was following – or at least keeping an eye on – Jax. "By the way, when you see Mr. Teller next, let him know that we won't be pressing charges against his wife. The DA was impressed by her sincere desire to get better and her dedication to her faith."

"Translation: you'd rather go after Jax."

"Jax, huh," the cop repeated, raising his brows in mock surprise. Tara bit her bottom lip to prevent a flush of self-recrimination, annoyed at her own slip. "Anyway, keep your eyes open and stay alert. But you're an old pro at that by now, so you should be fine."

Another reference to her past. "Quit looking into me."

"Or what," Hale challenged. Tara didn't reply. "I'm just trying to keep you safe." Finally, he turned to walk away, but, as he came to the swinging doors, he paused, glanced back over his shoulder at her. "Oh, and by the way, I might need your cooperation with this case. I'll be in touch."

As soon as he was gone, Tara slammed the chart she had previously been working on down against the formica desktop. It did absolutely nothing to relieve her frustration, rage, or panic. "Jesus Christ," she swore, swiping up the chart and stalking out of the room. She needed to work.

…

She had a new patient.

A one month old baby who was born at term... if not a few weeks late, yet she was losing weight and presented with projectile vomit. Although the little girl didn't fit the profile – there was no genetic history, and she was neither the first born nor male, Tara was fairly certain that she was suffering from...

"Ow!"

Pivoting around, she glared at the grinning woman across from her. "Sorry, Doc," Gemma Teller-Morrow apologized, though the sentiment lacked any and all sincerity. "Just needed to make sure that you were real."

"As opposed to what," Tara questioned while rubbing the spot on the back of her left arm where she had been pinched.

"A ghost." At her unamused frown, Gemma clarified, "you're always here. It's like you're haunting this place."

"I'm new, I'm young, and I'm still technically a resident. If I didn't haunt this place, _then_ there would be something wrong."

The older woman rolled her eyes. "One could also call it stalking."

Tara scoffed. "Who? You?"

"Thank god, no." And Gemma did sound sincerely relieved. "No, my grandson."

Shrugging her shoulders, she dismissed, "I'm not even here to see Abel. He's doing well. I do have other patients, you know." When Gemma still looked doubtful, Tara added, "every child in this NICU is my responsibility. Plus, I have several patients in the nursery as well."

Gemma held up a halting hand. "Alright, you made your point, Doc. I get it." Mockingly, she said, "you're indispensable."

For several seconds, they just stood there, staring at each other... like they were each waiting for the other to concede. Concede what, Tara wasn't sure. Eventually, however, she gestured towards Abel's room. "You can go on in. I've already performed my morning rounds. You can sit with Abel for as long as you want. The nurses will work around you."

"Oh, that's alright," Gemma waved her off, shifting her legs so that her weight was repositioned, her hands moving to rest against the small of her back. As she suspected by the move, Tara confirmed by looking down that the older woman was once more in heels. "I saw him already. The little guy doesn't do much, and I can't do much for him here either. But I can get things ready for him at home."

"Mrs. Teller-Morrow, you know that it'll be weeks – perhaps months – before Abel is released."

"It's never too soon to start shopping," Gemma bantered back. "Besides, I saw what that cranked out bitch had for him when I was over at Jax's, cleaning. Practically nothing. But I can't be surprised. After all, she couldn't even get killing herself right now, could she?"

Taking a step forward in interest, Tara narrowed her gaze. "You seem really sure that Wendy attempted suicide?"

"Once a junkie whore, always a junkie whore."

"Hmm... We'll see."

Gemma rolled her neck to the side and then back, piercing Tara with her annoyed gaze. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, it's just that the hospital review board is still gathering its evidence," she supplied helpfully. "Of course, they'll need to speak with Wendy once she's awake again, but there's also security footage to review." Feigning concern that someone was listening to their conversation, Tara glanced to either side before whispering, "did you hear that the doctors who treated her last night found faint bruising around her neck – like someone had grabbed her and tried to choke her."

The older woman observed her cooly, appraised her up and down before calmly responding, "self-inflicted, I'm sure. Wendy's a crazy bitch clean and sober, Doc. But high? She's certifiable."

"Either way," she shrugged, relaxed, placed her hands in the front pockets of her lab coat. "I'm sure she'd appreciate some visitors – people to let her know that she's not alone."

"Yeah, you do that, Mother Teresa," Gemma mocked, laughing off the idea. "Meanwhile, I'm going to go buy my grandson his first leather jacket."

Gemma was already turning around when Tara called out, "wait." As she watched her patient's grandmother peer over her shoulder, she said, "I just... are you sure you're doing the right thing?"

"Please, don't tell me you're one of those animal rights wackos who throw blood at people if they wear fur."

Tara shook her head in dismissal. "No, not about the leather jacket." Gemma finally turned around, fisting her hands on her hips in impatience. Gathering her courage and just ripping off that bandaid, so to speak, Tara asked, "do you really think it's a good idea to enable Jax?" Gemma reared back, clearly offended, but she pressed on. "He's doing much better, I'll give him that. He spent hours with Abel last night. But, in a couple of months, when that little boy leaves here, in all likelihood, Jax is going to be his only parent. You doing everything for him – playing mom – isn't helping Jax prepare for that; it isn't doing him any favors."

Gemma's mouth was pursed, gaze narrowed in approximation when she asked, "do you have any children, Doc?"

"No." She shook her head in accompaniment as well. "No, of course not. I think you already knew that, though."

"Well, then don't speak about things you can't understand," the older woman snapped – brown eyes blazing. "And for that matter," Gemma stalked forward, right index finger extended so that, when she came within two feet of Tara, she could poke her in the chest with her painted nail. "Don't think that you're going to insinuate yourself into my son's life and play mommy to his little boy either. You might not be a junkie whore, but you're still an uptight bitch, and I don't trust you. I'm not going to allow you anywhere near my grandson once he's free and clear of this place. Do we understand each other?"

Unruffled, she responded, "always have," before turning around and walking away.

And Tara wasn't lying. She _did _understand Gemma Teller-Morrow. That's how she knew that, despite the older woman's denials and finger pointing, she had tried to kill her daughter-in-law the night before. Maybe Gemma didn't fire the gun herself, but she put that loaded weapon in Wendy's unstable hands and then stood back to watch and enjoy the collateral damage. Tara also had no doubt that Wendy Teller would defend and cover for her mother-in-law until her last dying breath. She just didn't know if Wendy was blind with loyalty... or fear. In all likelihood, it was probably a combination of the two motivations. Both were extremely potent... and dangerous.

After all, for two vastly different reasons, Tara was well-versed in both.

…

She didn't even attempt to appear as if she wasn't waiting for him. In street clothes – just another pair of jeans and a light sweater, Tara sat in the rocker that remained, many an hour, empty inside of Abel Teller's room. That, too, was partly why she was there and not in the on-call room, or her office, or the place she rented. She knew what it was like to be alone – to have no one you could depend upon, and that was not something Abel needed. Instead, he needed love, and support, and the belief that he could grow up to be big and strong. He needed his father, but, if Jax wouldn't – or couldn't – be there, then Tara would be. She'd finally admitted to herself that she was far past the point of professionalism when it came to Abel's case. Now, she was embracing it. Sometime between her confrontation with Hale and her confrontation with Gemma, the perspective Tara had gained from Wendy Teller's second overdose was overshadowed by two facts: one, Abel and Jax needed her, and, two, she needed them as well.

It was exhausting – hiding day in and day out, living the life of a shadow, neither caring too much nor too little. Or, at least, it had been. A week earlier, Tara had simply been existing – going from moment to moment on autopilot as she tried to survive. Yes, she had fought back, and, yes, she had moved to Charming in an attempt to give herself a second chance, but she wrapped herself in secrets and lies and let no one in. But then a little boy with impossible odds stacked against him and his father with steeper and more dangerous walls than even her own came speeding into Tara's world, and everything changed. There was suddenly something to look forward to, something to hope for, something to want. Even if that was just for Abel to get better and for Jax to realize his potential as a parent – and that was all it could be, it was enough.

"You're always here."

Tara stood up quickly, surprised that Jax had managed to catch her off guard. Considering that she had been waiting for him, waiting to see if he'd even come to the hospital that night, her moment of self-assessment had obscured her awareness of her surroundings – further proof that she was starting to feel at home at St. Thomas, in Charming. She had meant the movement as an offering, giving Jax the rocker so that he could sit by his son, but then she noticed the cut on his face, and she was stepping across the small room before she even realized what she was doing.

Her hands lifted seemingly of their own volition, the left cupping his jaw and angling his face so that his left cheek was in the best light, while her right index finger hovered over the still bloody wound – not her actual touch but the heat from the pad of her digit tracing the mark. It wasn't new. He had received it the night before, yet it was fresh all the same, newly reopened. Jax's lids fluttered and then slid shut completely.

With his gaze hidden, Tara ran her own sight over the man standing before her. He looked weary – not merely just exhausted but also lost and unsure if he even wanted to be found. For a second, it was as though she was looking in the mirror. That was all it took for Tara to finally realize what it was that was happening between them. It was like recognizing like. Oh, there was attraction, too, but sex was easy. Sex was base and instinctual, and it could be found anywhere. Trust, compassion, and understanding, however, were rare. Their situations couldn't be any more dissimilar, but their repercussions – alienation from the very things that had once grounded and defined them – were the same.

"And you don't have to go out and get yourself injured every night just to make sure that I'll keep your confidences." Jax's eyes blinked open. He dropped his face slowly, his facial hair rasping against the palm of her hand, but, even after he was looking down upon her, he never once moved away from her touch. Tara found herself searching his gaze, looking for what she didn't know. "Physician-patient privilege."

"That's not why I talk to you, Tara."

Reciprocating his honesty, she confessed, "I feel safe here... at the hospital." And with you... which was ridiculous. For the second night in a row, he had blood on his body. Somewhere, in a burned out gun warehouse, there were two dead women that were somehow associated with his club. His wife was a few hallways over recuperating from her second drug overdose in as many days. Yet, Tara couldn't deny how she felt – at least not to herself. "That's why I'm always here."

Jax turned from her then, pivoting around to face away from both her and Abel. She watched silently as he roughly scrubbed his hands across his face, not caring for the cut he was aggravating or the blood he was transferring onto the skin of his fingers. She had a feeling the drops could never shine as bright as those which stained his hands in guilt. "I almost died tonight. _Again_."

Tara remained still. She didn't say a word; she didn't move. She just waited for him to continue, knowing that he would when he sorted out what he needed to say. Sure enough, after glancing out of the corner of his eye and biting his lip in thought, Jax focused upon his son and bitterly admitted, recrimination flowing from every syllable, "some idiot cut me off earlier today. It pissed me off, and it almost got us caught, but we went about what we had to do. Tonight, though, I saw his car at a gas station. It was just dumb luck. But I took one look at that car, and I was pissed all over again. I wanted to pay him back."

Adding an extra element of sarcasm to his tone, Jax rhetorically asked, "who the hell did he think he was to do that to _me_? So, I went inside after him. I allowed my pride to push me to the point where I lost control of my temper, and I beat him. Only... he pulled a gun, and it wasn't just me who was suddenly at risk. There were innocents, a woman." Shaking his head in accusation, Jax allowed, "if it wasn't for that owner... He drove an ax into the back of the guy's skull."

Tara's eyes widened as she imagined the grisly sight. She sucked in a quick, disturbed breath – her right hand lifting, fisted, so she could anxiously bite her already short thumb nail.

Jax finally looked over at her once again, shaking his head – at a loss. "I'm struggling here." Taking several steps forward, he came to stand next to her. As Tara had her back towards Abel's incubator, Jax faced it – their bodies side by side, their heads turned towards each other and their eyes tracking the other's face. "When I'm with my son – when I'm here in this room, or with you, or even when I'm by myself, I get it. I know what I have to do; I know that I need to start thinking like a father. But when I'm out there," he bucked his head towards the hall, indicating the world outside of Abel's NICU room. "When I'm with my club, I'm still that same guy who, just days ago, thought it was alright to go three weeks without calling his ex-wife to check on his unborn kid."

"What about the other guys," Tara asked, genuinely curious and hoping to help him find the answers he sought. Quirking her mouth up into a wry grin, she added, "by the little you've told me about your club's... habits, I'm guessing you're not the only one who has children. How do they balance it?"

Jax grunted in disdain. "They don't."

"They don't have children, or they don't handle fatherhood very well?"

"Oh, they have children." Pacing away, he started to explain. "First, there's Chibs. He has a wife and kid over in Ireland, but the same guy who gave him his _beauty marks_," and Jax emphasized his friend's scars by miming their location upon his own face, "would kill Chib's family, make him watch, and then kill Chibs if he even tried to see them. Then there's Bobby. I'm not sure how many kids he has. I've never met any of them. But I know he has two ex-wives, and he pays child support and alimony to both of them. Well, sometimes. He's late. A lot. Opie's a good dad... when he's been around, but he just got out after a five year stint in Chino. Next, we have Tig whose two daughters only come around when they want to scam him for money." Rounding so they could stare at one another while he finished his diatribe, Jax said, "their names are Dawn and Fawn. I don't think I need to say anything more."

Tara couldn't help but ask sarcastically, "are they strippers?"

"No." Jax's brows lifted in emphasis, he shook his head slightly once to the side in conviction. "But that'd probably be an improvement."

"Jesus."

He sighed loudly – nostrils flaring, chest expanding – in agreement. "We can't forget about me."

"What do you mean," Tara asked, brow wrinkling in confusion.

"I'm born and raised SOA. My father founded the club. My mother lost one husband to the road and then turned around and married his best friend, traded in one Samcro president for another. It's the only life I've ever known, the only life I've ever wanted, and the only life I never want for my son."

Narrowing her gaze, Tara tilted her head to the side, inhaling slowly and deeply, contemplating how she wanted to respond. She did so in silence, Jax patiently waiting for and watching her. Eventually, she straightened up and walked across the small room to stand directly before him, her right hand lifting to follow the lines of his patches. She shrugged. "I'm out of my element here, Jax. This life, your life? It's as alien to me as fatherhood is to you. I don't know how you reconcile these two drastically different parts of who you now are. I can help you learn how to take care of your son – how to feed him, bathe him, change him, but only you can teach yourself how to be his father. What I do know, however, is that these other men you talk about? They've never struggled with wanting to change for their children the way you are, so that means you're already one step ahead of them. And that's a good start, Jax."

Adding some levity to the moment, he suggested with a crooked grin, "so, basically, I should just figure out what Tig would do, and then do the exact opposite?"

She returned his smile, dropping her hand so that they were both casually resting at her sides. "Sounds like a plan. Only," frowning, she added, "I don't think that'll fit on a bracelet very well."

"I'm not exactly the bracelet kind of guy."

"No," she agreed, twisting her lips into a teasing moue. "You prefer rings."

His bright blue eyes suddenly glittered dangerously, mischievously. "I wear a necklace, too." His brows jumped in challenge. "Want to see?"

Before Tara knew what was happening, Jax was starting to strip. His kutte was shrugged off and tossed aside, his hands lifting the hem of his t-shirt before she recovered enough to say, "whoa, there. Your name is not Dawn or Fawn, and this is not show and tell." He allowed his top to fall down once more, snagging briefly on the waistband of his exposed boxers before settling. The kutte remained over the back of the rocker.

"Anytime you change your mind, Tara, just let me know."

She laughed. And then they shared a moment, just regarding each other, their amusement and enjoyment mutual. It was nice. It was _really _nice.

But it was also short-lived. "Now that I have you in a good mood, I need to tell you about what your ex-wife was up to last night." Jax went to protest, but she kept talking, knowing his reaction would be even worse to the second person she had to mention. "And also what everyone's favorite cop, Deputy Chief Hale, was up to today."

And so Tara did just that. They both settled onto the small couch she had ordered be brought into the room – Tara making sure that she kept a respectable amount of space between them, though Jax's arm lifted to rest along the back, and she could feel the heat of his bare skin even through the fabric of her sweater – and they both routinely turned their gazes away from the other to check on Abel. What Tara didn't do, however, was share her suspicions about Gemma. She wasn't assigned to Wendy's case, she wasn't investigating the overdose, and she would only make Jax's situation worse if she were to voice her ideas without proof to back them up. That was just another burden, one he and Abel did not need, and the last thing Tara ever wanted to do was add to their troubles. Plus, she didn't want to lose them, not yet. It was inevitable. Eventually, Abel would go home, and Jax would return to his old life or forge a new one. But that day was still months away, and, in the meantime, if keeping her suspicions about Gemma to herself kept them in her life, then so be it.

She had long ago accepted that 'Do No Harm' was just like everything else in life: relative.

…

Five minutes earlier, Tara had received a text from Jax, asking her to meet him on the loading docks again. Immediately, she started grabbing what supplies she could, filling her bag with gauze and bandages, suture kits and a basic version of her surgical gear, antibiotics and pain killers. Tara even grabbed a few bags of saline and some blood... just to be sure. She hadn't heard from Jax since the night before. No texts, no calls, no visits. She could only imagine the kind of trouble he was capable of getting himself into, especially after stories of blowing up warehouses, gunfights, and seeing a man struck in the back of the head with an ax. So, it was in a near panic that Tara tore through the hospital, trying to remain undetected in her haste yet still get outside as quickly as possible. By the time she burst through the loading dock doors, she was near breathless, her throat tight with apprehension.

For once, though, Jax didn't appear hurt. Her gaze zeroed in on him right away, running up and down his body, looking for injuries. She found none that were apparent. Although Tara assumed his torso was still tender and bruised from the gunshots, he wasn't bleeding, he didn't show signs of wearing someone else's blood, and he was smiling. In fact, if she had to name the expression Jax wore on his face, she would say that he looked pretty damn pleased with himself.

But, still, she couldn't shut off her response to what she had believed to be an emergency. Glancing around the dark, back lot of the hospital, Tara tried to find the reason for his text, but, besides the two of them, his bike, and some empty vehicles, they were alone. "What's going on? I thought...?" Brow furrowed in bewilderment, Tara turned back to a serenely waiting Jax. "No one's hurt?"

He chuckled. "Why would you think that?" In answer, she only tilted her head to the side and glared at him. Jax laughed again. "Alright, I can see your point. This shit's been pretty messed up since you and I met, but, for once, everything's good. No one's hurt. In fact, everyone's at my mom's house as we speak. She's throwing one of her big family dinners."

"Okay...? So, then, why are you here?"

Jax shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. "Well, I wanted to see the kid."

"Good. But you could have just come inside like you have the last couple of nights." Allowing her bag to slide down her arm and fall to the cement with a heavy thud, Tara continued, "there was no reason to ask me to meet you out... Oh." Her eyes finally landed on the containers of food spread out to the side, slightly away from where Jax stood.

"I could get away with packing enough food for two. My mom will just assume I plan on eating this for a couple of days. But your entire floor... even during the night shift? Gemma would be beyond suspicious. She'd figure out what I was doing, and she'd get pissed – not only because I didn't just ditch her dinner to visit Abel but also because I brought you some of her food. Plus, you can only carry so much on a bike."

Pleased and touched but still discombobulated from her previous fear and spike of adrenaline, Tara found herself asking, "why?"

"Everyone's gotta eat."

"I eat," she said defensively, folding her arms over her chest.

But Jax was undeterred. "I pretty much live off of Bobby's baked goods and stale cigarettes, and even that's better than what they serve in that cafeteria." He nodded with his head towards the hospital in emphasis. "And the stuff you get out of the vending machines doesn't count."

Defensively, she stated, "I sometimes bring things in with me, keep them in the on-call room."

Jax mimicked her stance – entwining his arms out in front of him, though his legs were braced further apart. "Look, have you had dinner tonight or not?"

"I haven't."

"And are you hungry?"

"I could eat," she admitted.

"Right," Jax returned, smirking and nodding in recognition.

Slowly, Tara started to approach both him and the food. "You said your mom didn't know that I'd be eating this?"

"Yeah. No. Why?"

She looked up through her lashes, grinned. "Just making sure that it isn't poisoned."

Jax took that as the acceptance to his invitation that it was and lowered himself to sit on the edge of the dock, seemingly just dropping down all at once only for his arms to brace and catch his weight before slowly lowering his body down the last few inches until he was seated. Tara moved more cautiously, first kneeling and then sliding down so that her legs were bent and twisted off to the side in front of her. She sat facing him, while Jax, much like the first time they were together outside, allowed his legs to dangle over the edge of the dock.

Jax started to open the containers of food, their warm, inviting aromas immediately making Tara's stomach gurgle in anticipation. "Unless I'm on Gemma's shit list, too – and I don't think that I've done anything recently to piss her off, we're safe." He paused then, looked up from his task. "You like steak, right?"

She grinned. It was either that or groan she was suddenly so hungry, and a steak sounded so good. Plus, it felt like they were talking about more than just whether or not she was a vegetarian. "I've been known to enjoy a porterhouse."

"Okay, good," Jax remarked before returning to unpacking their dinner. "I was just making sure. Half Sack, our prospect, he told me a couple of days ago that he doesn't eat meat. That shit caught me off guard."

"Do I even want to ask?" With his too long hair hanging in his eyes, Jax lifted his head to meet her questioning gaze. His own reflected confusion. "That name – Half Sack?"

Confusion morphed into humor, amusement. "I think it'd be pretty self-explanatory, especially for a surgeon."

Tara winced. "Birth defect?"

"No. Iraq."

Jax picked up a fork and selected the container of mashed potatoes, digging in. No plates, they were just going to share, passing things back and forth. Tara found it charming and sweet, though she'd never say as much. She went right for the steak. "Are many of your members veterans? Is that a club thing?"

"Sort of," Jax answered. "Especially in the past. I think all of the first nine – the original members – fought in Nam. My dad did, Clay, Piney. Chibs served for a little while before he was court-martialed."

"That makes sense. As humans, we get used to a certain way of life. Spend years in the military, fighting, and then all of a sudden be expected to return to civilian life? That has to be a difficult transition. I'd imagine MC's give ex-soldiers a sense of normalcy. The lifestyles are quite similar." When she finished speaking, Tara found Jax watching her closely, intensely, purposefully. "What?"

"Nothing," he said slowly, obviously weighing his words. "You just... what you said reminded me of something I've been reading a lot lately, something that my dad wrote."

She didn't press him for more information, but Tara did ask, "is that a good thing?"

"Yeah," Jax smiled tenderly. "I think so."

After that, they both seemed to silently agree to focus on their dinner, quietly eating. Though they didn't talk, it wasn't awkward or strained between them. They were both hungry, the food was good, and neither wanted to waste it or let it get cold. Plus, sometimes it was enough to be united in thought. Eventually, however, once they were both full and only picking at the food that remained, Jax spoke up, surprising Tara by what he said. "Hale stopped by the garage today."

While they often discussed his life inside of the club in terms of how it affected him personally and as a father, and she always told him about any run-ins she had with the deputy chief concerning him, his son, or his soon-to-be ex-wife, this felt different; this felt like new territory between them. But, first, she questioned, "the garage?"

"Yeah, my old man and Clay started it together years ago – Teller-Morrow. It's legit. We all work there – handle basic repairs, offer towing services, repo, and we get some custom bike jobs as well. If you ever need any mechanical work done, it's on the house." With a snicker, he added, "I'll even have Lowell do the work for you."

"Not you?"

"I'm not that good of a mechanic," Jax admitted, "especially not with cars."

"I'll keep that in mind. Thanks," Tara said genuinely. Returning to his original point, she inquired, "what did Hale want?"

"Just his usual bullshit bluster," Jax answered, though she could tell that it was more than that, because, otherwise, why would he be bringing it up? But she wouldn't push him. Rather, she simply waited, allowed Jax to sort through his thoughts, and feelings, and worries in his own way and time. "He was mouthing off about how Samcro is a dying idea and how you can't stop progress, how we're nothing but criminals, and how he's going to be the one to bring us down. And, to some extent, most of that is true." Tara was staggered by his admission but kept her incredulity to herself. "But..."

"But what?"

"But he said something that... Look, it's stupid."

"Jax, if it's bothering you, it's not stupid."

He nodded, pulling his legs up so that they were bent before him, his body leaning forward so that he could rest his elbows against his knees. Head angled forward, his hair fell down to cover his face, and she couldn't see him as he sighed and then admitted, "in a couple of weeks, Hale was going to be promoted to chief."

"Was?"

Jax turned his head to the left to look at her. "We got the current chief to sign on for six more months. Hale's pissed."

"Which means he'll be coming after you even harder now," Tara surmised.

Jax's nod of agreement confirmed her suspicions. "It was how he accused us of going about this that bothered me."

Moving so that she was sitting crossed legged, Tara braced one of her own elbows – her left – on a knee, leaning her cheek against her left closed fist. Softly, she questioned, "what did he say?"

"He said, 'what did you do, threaten to rape his daughter.'" Before she could respond, he pressed, "is that how people see us? Is that what Hale tells people we're like? I know he's been talking to you a lot about the club, trying to scare you off."

"He's less than complimentary," she hedged. When she could tell that Jax was going to insist upon more, she continued, "he's mentioned how the lifestyle you live can be dangerous for those around you, especially women, but he's never accused you or the club of rape, at least not..."

Jax interrupted her. "Good, because, Tara, I would _never _do that."

"Hey," she spoke up, catching his attention as she reached out and captured his left hand in her right, pulling it down from his knee and holding it between them. "I know that, Jax."

He licked his lips, nodded slowly in acknowledgment of her reassurance. Eventually, she let go of his hand, and, in the awkwardness that followed, started cleaning up their dinner, putting the lids back on the containers and stacking them together. Jax joined her. "I'm going to have to learn how to cook, aren't I?"

Tara paused, lifted her gaze to look at him. "What?"

"For Abel," Jax clarified. "Unlike me, he can't get by on Bobby's baked goods and stale cigarettes."

"I think that would be frowned upon," Tara agreed, laughing softly. They both stood, Jax surprising her when he held out a hand to help her up. She accepted it but let go of his grip quickly, his touch lingering long after she could no longer feel his fingers wrapped around her own. Skipping the stairs, he hopped over the side of the dock and then reached back, grabbing the containers. While he stored them on his bike, Tara said, "but you have time. It'll be a little while before he's off the bottle, let alone not eating baby food anymore. Besides, I doubt your mother would ever let her grandson go hungry."

Jax snorted. Even from a distance, she could see him roll his eyes. "Gemma's up my ass about enough shit as it is. I don't need her controlling what I feed my kid, too."

Tara couldn't help the smug smile that spread across her face at the sound of his pronouncement. As Jax jogged up the steps, rejoining her, they, without communication, both moved towards the loading dock doors, Jax picking up her bag of supplies on his way. He carried it for her, while she swiped them inside. Side by side, they companionably walked towards the elevator, talking softly. "For now, let's just worry about getting him out of the incubator first."

"One step at a time."

Like so many other things he said, Tara believed his words to hold more than one meaning, but, rather than address what else he was talking about, she simply nodded in agreement.

"Now," Jax said with a touch of eagerness, pivoting around when they entered the elevator to select the button for Abel's floor. "Let's go see my son."

Tara did not miss how, even when merely hinted at with a light touch or the simple choice of a plural pronoun, Jax always insisted that she accompany him to his son's NICU room. She knew she should fight him on the dependency. After all, father and son needed time alone to bond and get comfortable with one another, but she just couldn't. To be needed was a balm to the wounds inflicted by her lack of family, but it also helped heal her more recent scars, her deeper and more intimate scars, to be wanted. That wasn't something Tara could walk away from – at least, not yet.

And she didn't want to.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The soft, reassuring sounds of Abel's machines, of Jax's breathing, filled her ears; her eyes, lids heavy, watched the chests – one so small and vulnerable, one so capable – of both Teller boys as they slept on peacefully before her, Jax's respirations instinctively timed to match those of his son's. Tara should have been asleep, too. She was tired. She had rounds in the morning; she was running out of clean clothes, so she'd have to make a trip back to her room at the inn; and she had long ago learned to enjoy the moments of pure calm. They didn't happen very often – even in a town as small as Charming.

That was something Tara had been foolishly fearful of when relocating from Chicago – that she would be bored, that, after the speed, and the demand, and the rush that was working at a major metropolitan hospital – one life or death case after another – St. Thomas wouldn't be capable of keeping her interest or challenging her. But Tara had been wrong. Perhaps she didn't have as many cases, but they were just as important, just as intense, and just as all-consuming.

Or maybe that was just what she told herself so that she wouldn't have to face the truth.

What she was really afraid of was that she wasn't capable of enjoying the calm anymore. For Tara, quiet meant she wasn't listening hard enough to hear those sounds someone didn't want her to detect. The stillness was always misleading – action in suspension versus actual rest. And contentment? Contentment was just a means of making her let down her guard. Danger lurked in the calm. She had learned that the hard way, too.

So, even though the hospital made her feel safe – after all, she was never alone there, it didn't necessarily allow her to relax. Sometimes it seemed like she was only able to let go and sleep when surrounded by sheer chaos. Chaos was familiar, and she trusted it... as much as she could trust anything or anyone. She trusted Jax, too – had told him so, in fact, and Tara hadn't been lying, not even to herself, when she had made such a declaration. She had no doubt that, if someone were to try and hurt her, Jax would do whatever he could to protect her. But that willingness to put himself between her and harm was a whole different set of worry. The thought of being the reason why someone else, someone who mattered to her, was hurt terrified Tara.

But she was sick and tired of being scared. Hell, that was why she had picked up her entire life and moved across the country to a little, hole-in-the-wall town that was supposed to offer her the respite of anonymity. Only, Charming in its smallness, was proving to be simply a microcosm of what she had left behind. The same entanglements, and complications, and grayness existed there. In fact, because Tara now felt like a vital part of something significant rather than just a cog in the wheel of a finely honed machine, those entanglements and complications meant more, that grayness was murkier. With each day, she was becoming more and more emotionally invested in the people, things, and places around her, which just meant that, when everything came crumbling down, the pain and devastation would be that much worse.

She couldn't walk away, however. Not only did her career mean more to her than her emotional self-preservation, but Tara realized that she'd rather feel that pain and devastation than feel nothing at all... which just brought her back full circle, because that desire was yet something else to fear. But then Jax shifted in his sleep – his hips lifting and sliding forwards, his body angling towards Abel's incubator just a few degrees more, and Tara sighed, joy singing through her blood and making her feel just that much more alive. Finally, she could fight her body's needs no longer, and her lashes fluttered once, twice, and then closed completely.

Tara managed to hover in that murkiness that was the state between awareness and slumber for less than a minute before all hell broke loose.

The first thing she heard was the aching sobs of a traumatized mother, but then every other sound that accompanied the wreckage of one's world being dismantled settled in as well: rushed, determined footsteps; the looping squeaks of a hospital gurney being wheeled over freshly mopped floors; the quiet words and reverent tones of hospital personnel discussing a case while trying to project confidence and poise, respect in the face of a family's desolation; the hum of, at first, worried on-lookers, and then slowly the din crescendoing into curious gossip, the whispers carrying far more weight and noise than a father's shouts for justice or a victim's screams of pain.

As Tara slipped away from where she had been reclined upon the couch in Abel's room, she came to stand in the open doorway – a silent sentinel to the passing soldiers, their war one she knew all too well. The patient was fortunate in that they were unconscious – whether merely asleep or medically induced, she couldn't tell; the parents obviously relieved that the hospital was slow that evening, no crowd there to witness their little girl's damnation. But that was where her observations stopped. Instead, Tara could see nothing but the ripped clothing, the bruises, the blood.

She'd never been raped, never felt that ultimate destruction of security and self. But Tara was familiar with violation, with intimidation, with feeling as if one's control had been cruelly ripped away from them. She knew the fear of not being able to trust strangers and friends alike, of feeling like one couldn't trust themselves. She understood losing one's very identity in a single, solitary moment, and she understood the sheer amount of will required to fight in an effort to gain it back. She recognized and remembered broken things and broken skin; the blacks, and the blues, and the purples, and the greens, and the yellows, and even the reds of hemorrhages beneath the skin which had been damaged and traumatized by the cruel hands of someone who thought they had a right to control you, to possess you, to overpower you.

Tara felt her breath stutter in her lungs, felt it catch on the suddenly dry skin of her parted and trembling lips. Her heart beat faster, louder, harder, heavier. Dizzy, she rocked back and forth on her unsteady feet, her face and hands prickling painfully as the blood rushed from her extremities. She felt like she needed to throw up – bile rising in her throat to choke her, gag her, burn her from the inside out. Without thought, she brought her left wrist out in front of her torso, the pads of her fingers on her right hand tracing the ghosts of bruises her eyes were seeing once again. Despite the time that had passed, she could still feel the tenderness.

"Tara?" A hand, savage in its deceptively kind and gentle nature, settled upon her shoulder. She gasped in terror, retched on a sob torn from her stinging throat. But then she recognized the touch as Jax's, and the relief that washed through her entire body was so swift in banishing the tension of her anxiety that it left her nearly boneless. She relaxed on a shuddering exhale. Although she didn't give in entirely and lean into Jax's waiting embrace like she wanted to, she did allow his strength and comfort to warm away the lingering chill of her recollection. Still, she didn't say anything, however, and, when Jax next spoke, she could hear the uncertainty and escalating concern in his tone. "Tara?"

"A little girl was just brought in – no more than thirteen, maybe fourteen. She'd been beaten, raped."

Jax didn't offer empty platitudes or ask inane questions like 'will she be alright?,' and, for that, Tara was thankful, her almost instinctual faith in him once more justified. Rather, he quietly, respectfully queried, "your past?"

Slowly, Tara turned around, Jax's hand following the line of her shoulder, her arm, her wrist, her fingers until his touch finally slipped away from her own. Meeting his gaze, she evenly stated, "I wasn't that young, and I stopped it before it went that far, but, yes, my past."

He nodded once. She could see the flare of feeling behind his intense, blue gaze – remorse, fury, regret, that thirst for revenge that drove his character. She also saw admiration and respect. What Tara didn't see was pity or even disgust, which validated her trust and made her realize that Jax was right; someday, she would tell him what had happened to her. But that day was not upon them yet, and Jax didn't press the issue.

Instead, he hitched his head in the direction of the couch, indicating that they should both approach the sofa. They did. Jax allowed Tara to sit first. She choose the far end, curling her legs beneath her and resting the side of her head against the back. Once she was settled, Jax collapsed into the opposite corner – his legs staying out in front of him, though his head moved to reflect her position. Sporadically blinking, they simply watched each other, eventually getting closer and closer to falling asleep. Just before Tara's lids fell for the final time that night, she felt Jax's left fingers wrap through and around those of her right hand. The reassuring weight of his palm stretching from her knuckles to well past her wrist was the final push she needed to let go and relax into slumber.

…

Cooly, dispassionately, Tara observed Wendy Teller as she woke from her sedated detox with a snuffle and a groan, with a painful wince. The blinds were open and the room bright, no doubt an uncomfortable setting for someone who had just overdosed not once but twice. Still, Tara didn't stand to close the shades. Frankly, she needed the light, and Wendy deserved it. As she waited for the other woman to notice her presence, she sat silently – scrub encased legs crossed, forearms resting against the arms of her chair, hands folded in her lap.

As Wendy stretched, she also took in her surroundings. "Jesus," she rasped upon catching sight of Tara. "What the hell?" It was obvious that her throat was dry, that she was thirsty. Wordlessly, Tara rose to pour her a small glass of water, passing it off to the other woman with a nod before reclaiming her seat. Wendy drank it slowly, never once taking her eyes off of Tara. When she was finished, she pushed the empty cup onto her bedside table, laid back down, and demanded, "who the hell are you?"

"I'm Doctor Tara Knowles."

"You're a shrink, right," Wendy guessed, scowling and rolling her eyes. "A different one, because my last talk with one of your kind went _so well_."

Tara didn't rise to the bitterness, to the bait. "Actually, no. I'm your son, Abel Teller's, surgeon."

"Yeah, I know my own kid's name," Wendy snapped.

"Of course."

"Don't patronize me," the other woman warned, voice rising with irritation. "Just because I'm in this bed doesn't mean..."

"I'm sorry," Tara interrupted, holding her hands out and up in supplication. "My intention was not to upset you."

Wendy calmed somewhat, but she still remained skeptical, on edge. "So, then, what is your intention?"

"I want to talk to you about what happened – about your second overdose."

With narrowed gaze, Wendy challenged, "I thought you said that you weren't a shrink?"

"I'm not."

Abel's mother turned away, stared at the wall opposite of Tara. "Then you have no business here."

"Wendy, I'm not here to hurt you, or to judge you, or to..."

A snort of derision cut Tara off. Dark eyes burning with animosity and self-recrimination flashed in her direction. "Right. You're not here to judge me. The fact that you're here at all, because you're sure as hell not my doctor, says that you already have."

Tara decided to be blunt. "I know you weren't trying to kill yourself, and I know that no friend brought you in that much crank."

"You don't know shit."

She continued undaunted. "So, either someone shot you up with enough meth to kill you, or they guilted you into giving yourself the overdose. Either way, that person needs to pay for their crimes."

With an empty, acidic smile, Wendy suggested, "maybe I just wanted one last high before being shipped off to rehab. _Again_."

"Your overdose had nothing to do with wanting to get high."

"Yeah, and what do you know about being an addict," Wendy challenged, pushing herself up so that she was more fully alert. She bit her lip in discomfort. "About needing that rush; about being willing to do anything for those few blissful moments of numbness, of feeling nothing? Hell," Wendy scoffed, "I'd bet you've never even smoked a joint before."

"You're right," Tara allowed. "I've never taken drugs to get high before, but that doesn't mean that I don't understand addiction, about craving the rush. There's no greater high than being a surgeon and knowing that a person's life rests in your skills, in your abilities, in your knowledge. That's the best rush ever."

Wendy scoffed, laughing cruelly. "That doesn't make us the same, Doctor Tara Knowles; that makes you a control freak bitch, and that leaves me as the junkie whore that I've always been."

"I see that you've been talking to Gemma."

"Well, for better or worse, and until my divorce papers are finalized, she is my mother-in-law, so, yeah, she's been by a few times."

"Was she here the night you overdosed," Tara inquired. She unfolded her hands. "Did she bring that syringe full of crank to you?" Tara brought her right hand up to her own neck to mimic the bruises on Wendy's skin. "Did she squeeze the life out of you while she threatened you, taunted you, ridiculed you?"

"Even if she did," Wendy fiddled with her own hands – spreading them wide and running her nails between her knuckles, over the webs between her fingers where needles had pierced her skin so many times in the past. "Why do you care?"

"I care because a hospital is supposed to be a safe place. I care because you're the mother of my patient," Tara answered honestly.

Yet, those weren't the only reasons motivating her visit, and Wendy seemed to pick up on what Tara left unsaid. "Oh, I get it," the other woman sneered, shaking her head from side to side in rancorous realization. "You do care – you care _a lot_, but it sure as hell isn't about me."

Defensively – even when she knew what image the movement presented, Tara still found herself doing it anyway, she folded her arms across her chest. "I don't know what you're..."

"Shut up," Wendy snapped, glaring. "I may be an addict, but I'm not stupid, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't lie right to my face."

"I'm not lying to you when I say that I'm concerned about what happened to you."

"Oh, I know you are," Wendy said, but her tone was anything but tolerant or patient. "Because you care about _my _husband, and you care about _my _son, and, now, you want to know just how big of a threat I am to you."

Having been pushed too far, Tara decided that she had been nice long enough. "You're right. Abel is my patient, and Jax is my friend, so, yes, I do care about them, but we both know that you are not a threat, especially to me."

"No," Wendy sang out, drew out. In a smug jibe, she added, "but Gemma is."

"Fine, protect her if you want," Tara said, standing. "But just remember two things: I wasn't the one who wanted you dead." She crossed the room, took hold of the door handle before looking back over her shoulder. "And, if Gemma wants to kill me, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than a syringe full of cheap crank." Tara pulled open the door and lobbed one last, parting remark. "Good luck in rehab, Wendy. _Again._"

…

"Samcro is going after Tristan Oswald's rapist."

Tara jumped – startled, closing her eyes in frustration. At least she hadn't been holding her patient. Centering herself by placing a gentle hand on the belly and chest of the baby before her in the incubator, Tara counted to ten before turning around, slowly walking away, and closing the door to the nursery behind her. The infants did not need to be subjected to Deputy Chief Hale's brand of justice.

But she wasn't going to bait him, and she wasn't going to allow him to bait her either. After all, when dealing with the Charming Deputy Chief, Tara had quickly realized that he wouldn't take the vexation she caused him out on her; he'd take it out on Jax. "I am not assigned to Miss Oswald's case. I know neither her nor her family, and I am not privy to any information regarding what may or may not have happened to her. I'm sorry, but I cannot help you."

Tara moved to walk away, but Hale followed after her. "Can't or won't," he queried several steps behind her rapid pace.

Due to the sensitive nature of what they were discussing – the last thing Tristan Oswald needed was for an entire hospital floor to overhear the man investigating her rape sprout off details that were nobody's business but those involved, Tara stopped, waited for the police officer to get within a few feet of her before quietly responding, "if I could help, I would." Emphasizing her next words, Tara enunciated carefully. "But I can't."

"You have eyes; you have ears."

She couldn't help but taunt, "those are very astute observations, Deputy Chief, but I fail to see your point."

"My point is that, if you would see or hear something that could help with this case, you need to contact me."

"Or somebody else in your department, of course," she suggested with guile and a deceptively innocent grin. "Maybe I'll just talk to Mr. Oswald himself and allow him to decide what to do with any information I may or may not see or hear."

Hale narrowed his gaze at her in suspicion. "Just what game exactly are you playing, Dr. Knowles?"

"This isn't a game," she retorted shortly.

"At least we agree about one thing."

"I just don't trust you," Tara continued. "I don't trust you to do your job impartially, and I don't trust you not to selfishly use that badge you wear so proudly on your chest to your own ends."

Hale took a step forward trying to crowd her, trying to intimidate her. His voice, when he spoke, was low with menace. "And you think, if Jax and the club were to get their hands on Tristan's rapist first, that they would do what's best for that little girl?" Before she could respond, the cop continued, "you know that they'll kill him, and that's not going to help anybody."

"But it would stop him from ever hurting anybody else again, now, wouldn't it?"

He looked taken aback by her response. "As a doctor, you would actually condone murder?"

"But that's just it," Tara argued, looking the Deputy Chief directly in the eye. To do so, she had to tilt her head back at a less than comfortable angle. "I'm not _just_ a doctor, and life's not as cut and dried as you'd like to believe it is. I'm also a woman, and, someday, I want to be a wife and a mother, too. Life's also complicated, and messy, and too big for us to ever fully understand. Do I condone murder? No. But, if one man putting down some sick freak helps a little girl and her family sleep better at night, then I could see how somebody else might."

Hale tried one last tactic. "Samcro isn't the law."

"I think they're well aware of the fact. You remind them of it enough, after all," Tara pointed out.

He seemed to bristle at her words, but he didn't back down. "They can't be allowed to run around this town playing judge, jury, and executioner."

Before Tara could respond, her cell phone rang. Stepping away and reaching into the right pocket of her lab coat, she removed it, checked the number. She didn't recognize who was calling, but that wasn't rare given her policy regarding communication with the families of her patients. She saved all the numbers they provided her with, but sometimes questions came up at work, or at a relative's, or when they didn't have reception, and a parent didn't wait until they could use a number she would have programmed into her cell to call. Why should they? "Hello, this is Doctor Tara Knowles."

There was a sigh on the other end of the line, and it made the hair rise on the back of Tara's neck. "It's been a long time since..."

She snapped her phone shut, cutting off anything else the voice – _that _voice, _his _voice – was going to say. With shaking hands, Tara slipped her cell back into her pocket. It wasn't until Hale spoke from behind her that she remembered where she was, what she had been doing, who she was standing with.

"Are you alright?" She didn't like the man, but she could tell that his concern was genuine.

Still, though, Tara was not about to confide in Charming PD's second-in-command. "Just a..." She cleared her throat, shook away any lingering unease. Meeting Hale's worried gaze, she assured him, "just a wrong number."

"Okay," the Deputy Chief said carefully. Tara could tell that he didn't believe her, but she didn't care. "You know, though, if it ever was something else – something more, that you could come to me, and I'd help you, no hard feelings about our little battle of wills." And he gestured between them, indicating their animosity that had been present since the day they met.

"I do." And she did... if for no other reason than Hale would love to lord Tara asking him for help over Jax. Haltingly, she added, "thanks."

He nodded once and then walked away.

Tara waited until she could no longer see the cop before she, too, left, electing to duck into the chapel where she hoped she'd find a little privacy. It was empty. Retrieving her cell phone once again, she dialed on instinct. It took three rings for him to answer.

"Hey?"

"Hi. It's not a bad time, is it? I'm not bothering you, am I?"

"No, it's cool." She could hear voices in the background. "What's up?"

"You're busy," she said instead of answering him or asking what she actually called about. "I know you're looking for that rapist, and it was presumptuous of me to call. Just forget..."

"Tara," Jax interrupted. She heard both exasperation and pleasure when he said her name. "It's fine," he stressed both words. "What's going on?"

"Hale was just here, asking questions about Tristan Oswald."

"Shit," he swore. "I didn't think you were working her case?"

"I'm not," she responded. "But that wasn't a concept Charming's Deputy Chief seemed capable of grasping. He insisted, if I were to see or hear anything regarding his investigation, that I was to inform him. I don't think it's likely to happen, but, just in case, I thought I'd see if there was actually someone on the police force that I could trust if I were to learn anything of value." She felt guilty for using the Oswald girl's situation as her cover story, and she didn't like withholding the true reason behind her inquiry from Jax, but Tara did need to know if there was an honest cop in Charming, and she told herself that Jax was better off not knowing what really was motivating her.

"Call Unser if you get anything," Jax answered.

"Should I let you know as well?"

"Nah," he replied, and Tara noticed that the background noise had gotten less and less during their conversation, like Jax had moved away from whomever he was with. "I wouldn't want you to put yourself in that kind of position, Tara. Besides," and he chuckled. "If it's something we need to know, Unser will tell us."

"Alright, and thanks," she said, knowing their call was coming to a close. "Good luck, I guess?"

Jax simply responded with, "I'll see you tonight." And then he hung up.

Nodding once, Tara was already dialing again as she walked out of the chapel. She had a cop to track down.

…

"Chief Unser?"

"God damn it," the short in stature, balding man before her cursed as he thew his towel down upon his lap. "Can't a man get five minutes of...," he continued to grumble until he finally looked at Tara, recognizing that he didn't know her. "I'm sorry." The older man smiled politely. "How can I help you, young lady... or should I say doctor, judging by those green pajamas you're wearing?"

"Doctor Tara Knowles," she confirmed, returning his grin with a slight one of her own. "I apologize for bothering you when you're not at work."

"Don't worry about it," he assured her, waving off her regret. "I'm the one who should be apologizing – for barking at you. You see, I thought you were one of the department secretaries, harassing me about an idiot jaywalker or something equally as pointless. What can I help you with, sweetheart?"

"It's silly, really," Tara immediately dismissed.

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that."

"Alright," she agreed. "Well, a friend of mine said that I could trust you."

"That's a good start," Chief Unser prompted her. "Trust me with what exactly?"

"Okay, this is going to sound worse than it actually is," Tara warned, "but, if I had a restraining order against someone in another city, would it still apply here?"

The suddenly worried man picked up his towel and wiped off his face. "Are you in some kind of danger? Is somebody threatening you?"

"No, I just..." Wringing her hands together and licking her lips, Tara paused and regrouped. "Would it still be valid?"

"Well, I really couldn't say," he told her, and she could sense that he didn't like not knowing the answer to her question, that he couldn't tell her what she needed and wanted to hear. "It would depend upon when and where the order was issued." Narrowing his gaze, the chief observed her closely. "Do you think this person is coming here to Charming?"

Trying to affect self-possession and a calm she didn't feel, Tara said, "I'm sure I'm just being paranoid. It's this guy I dated once. When I tried to end things... Anyway, it was just a phone call. I'm probably over-reacting."

"Just to be safe, if you want to give me his name, I'll run him – see what I can find out about this restraining order and make sure that you really are safe here."

"No, that's okay. I wouldn't want you to go to the trouble."

"Trust me, sweetheart," Unser promised. "It wouldn't be any trouble." Whereas if anyone else were to call her sweetheart, Tara would take it as demeaning, but, with the chief, it just seemed... nice. He was an amiable older gentleman. While Tara had no doubt that he could be just as cunning as the next guy if need be, there was also this overwhelming sense of kindness to Wayne Unser.

"Thank you, but no."

"Well, I'm still going to do a little poking around," he told her, nodding once to accentuate his own conclusion. "I have your name, if nothing else, so I'll just see if anything pops." Before she could respond, he changed topics. "Do you mind if I ask who this friend was?"

"It doesn't..."

"It was Jax Teller, wasn't it," Chief Unser answered his own question. Tara had no idea how he knew that, and he seemed to sense her bewilderment, for he chuckled. "I have stage three cancer, so I spend a little time at the hospital, and I long ago decided that it was better for Charming if I were to work with Samcro rather than against them. You're his kid, Abel's, doctor, right?"

"I am."

"Tell Jax what's going on," Unser instructed her. "While I appreciate you coming to me with this, if anyone can keep you safe, it's Jax."

"It's not like...," she started to explain, but then she changed tactics. "That wouldn't be very professional."

"Yeah, well, you can't be professional if you're dead, sweetheart, and, if you were afraid of this ex of yours enough to take out a restraining order, and he just called you, then I'd say it's time to forget about being professional and, instead, focus on self-preservation."

The bell above the barber shop's door rang, signaling that there was a new arrival, but Tara didn't pull her gaze away from the very forthright and very forward chief's. "Give us a... Tara?"

She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from reacting, closing her eyes for just a second in self-admonishment. "Anyway, thanks for your time, Chief Unser. It was nice to meet you. If I see or hear anything about the Oswald case, I'll let you know."

Tara nodded in recognition when she walked by Jax, but, otherwise, she didn't address him. As she was leaving, she heard Unser say, "you keep an eye on that girl, Jax. She's running scared from something."

"Yeah," Jax agreed tightly. "I know." She could feel his eyes burning into her back as he watched her. But she never turned around, and she didn't stop. "And I will."

She shouldn't have found his promise as comforting as she did.

…

If the last few evenings once more proved to be a habit that night, she and Jax would end up talking late and then falling asleep in Abel's hospital room. With this in mind, Tara had forgone jeans and, instead, elected to slip on a pair of yoga pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt after showering following her shift. There was no sense being uncomfortable, and she was far passed the point where she felt the need and was much too secure to primp for the boy she liked.

Not that anything was going to happen between she and Jax, Tara was still sticking with that denial.

As she rounded the corner to head down the hallway towards Abel's room, Tara wasn't expecting to see Jax until she stepped inside. She knew he was there. After word spread that the Oswald family was finally talking to the police but that Deputy Chief Hale's jeep had been sabotaged so he couldn't leave the hospital right away to make his arrest, Tara had known that Jax had gotten to the rapist first. That had been several hours earlier, and the Sons of Anarchy wouldn't need that much time to deal with a sick and twisted pervert who attacked little girls. But Jax wasn't inside his son's NICU room. Instead, he was sitting out in the hallway – on the floor, feet braced against the tile and knees bent for his elbows to rest upon... much like he had been sitting the night they ate dinner together outside on the loading dock.

"Jax," she questioned, approaching him. He didn't look up, just rotated his head around so that he could peer through his long hair. Without thought of how their appearance together might look and without second guessing what she was about to do, Tara knelt down beside him, using her index finger to gather and push his blonde locks back behind his left ear. "What's going on? Why are you sitting out here and not inside with Abel?"

"It doesn't feel right," he confessed on a whisper, "going to him every night with blood on my hands."

So, the rapist was dead.

While Tara hated to see how heavily Jax's guilt was weighing upon him, she struggled to piece together any of her own remorse for the murdered man. She did, however, regret how it was affecting Jax. "She was a thirteen year old girl. I don't think anybody would hold this blood against you." Looking around them to make sure that nobody was watching or listening in on their conversation, Tara didn't see anybody, but that didn't mean that she felt they were safe to talk out there in the open either. "Come on," she insisted, wrapping her hands around his arm – one above and one just below his elbow – and pulling him up with her. Luckily, Jax cooperated, standing, because there was no way she would have been able to move him without his combined effort.

Once they were inside, she closed the door securely behind them. "It's done, then? I take it Elliott got his revenge?" He shot her a puzzled look. Tara shrugged self-effacingly. "People talk."

After a brief moment, he scuffed his dusty, white tennis shoes against the floor, looking down at his feet as he said, "he couldn't do it."

"So, the guy isn't...?"

"Clay did it for him," Jax interrupted. Then, his tone turned resentful. "Clay did it for himself."

Tara shook her head and admitted, "I don't understand."

Jax licked his top lip, ran his teeth over the bottom, raising his brows in emphasis. "Elliott Oswald is a very rich and powerful man, which makes him a great blackmail mark." They were facing towards each other – Tara just inside the door, Jax further into the room with his back towards his son's incubator. But then he moved, his wide steps eating up the distance between Abel and the couch in a matter of seconds. Exhausted, he collapsed onto the sofa. "I had no problem hunting that animal down so Oswald could get whatever kind of justice he needed. It was his kid who got hurt. But Clay...?" He grimaced, shook his head in unreleased wrath. "Clay had us out searching for this guy, and the whole time he had an ulterior motive. Either way, he'd get what he wanted, too. Either Oswald would kill the pig, and Clay'd be able to hold that debt over his head, or he wouldn't, and Clay would do it for him and still walk away with blackmail material." Sitting back and exhaling harshly, Jax admitted, "we had no business getting involved in this mess. Vengeance is a daunting responsibility, one we're not up to the task of."

Tara chose that moment to cross the room towards Jax, sitting down close beside him, though she made sure they didn't touch. "Oh, I don't know. What you just said there? It was pretty wise, competent."

Jax looked at her, grinned wryly. "My words, not my idea." Catching her off guard by the shift in topic, he nodded his head towards his little boy. "Do you think he can hear us?"

"I do."

"So, then, maybe I should start reading to him?"

Tara smiled widely, proudly. "I can get you some books from the nursery."

"Nah." And Jax lifted a hand, patting it against his chest where she realized he had something beneath his fastened kutte. "I brought something with me. It's something I found when Abel was born. I've been reading it a lot lately. My dad wrote it... about Samcro – about the mistakes he made and the things he wanted to change."

"I think that – you reading this, your father's words, to Abel – will be good for the both of you."

"And you, too. You're staying, right?" She nodded her assent, and he gave her a fleeting yet pleased smile in return. A comfortable silence fell between them. Minutes went by. It was companionable and relaxing, Tara getting better situated on the sofa. Her lids were just about ready to droop shut when she felt Jax's touch upon her left hand, his fingers tenderly tracing the lines of her own digits. She snapped to attention, her gaze locking onto how their skin looked side by side, embracing, flowing together and then ebbing apart. "I can't imagine having a daughter. With Abel, it's different. I love him, and I want to protect him, but a daughter? I don't think I could handle that. If something like what happened to Tristan happened to my little girl...?"

Tara considered what he had said. "I don't know... I could see you with a daughter. She'd control you from the moment she drew her first breath on, but it'd be sweet... until she wanted to start dating. Then it would just become scary."

"No, what's scary is the idea of a little Wendy or, worse, a miniature Gemma."

Despite the heavy and sensitive nature of what had prompted their teasing, Tara was enjoying it, and she didn't want the lighter moment to fade away too quickly. Bumping her shoulder against Jax's, she cajoled, "come on, she could just as easily turn out like your favorite elementary school teacher, or your first crush, or..."

"Or like you, Tara."

She went completely still in shock, all traces of humor fleeing until she tried to force some levity and laughed. It was a poor imitation. "When I think about having a daughter someday, I really hope she's not like me, that she doesn't make my same mistakes."

Jax allowed the delicate moment and her reaction to it to slide. "You want kids, though?"

"I do. But children change... everything."

Once more, he shifted the subject. "Wendy's going to rehab."

"I know." Tara closed her eyes in realization of what she had just admitted.

"You two talked?"

"I'm Abel's doctor; she's Abel's mother. It seemed... necessary."

"Yeah, I guess," Jax agreed, shrugging unconcerned. "I told her what happened to Abel wasn't her fault."

"That was kind of you," she praised.

"It's the truth." He shrugged, leaned back, but, still, Jax never let go of her hand. "I'd filed for divorce before Wendy got pregnant. But then she got clean, and we reconciled... even though I knew that I didn't want to be married to her. When she found out she was pregnant, I was already gone again, and I was pissed – didn't want anything to do with either her or the kid." Shaking his head in accusation, Jax admitted, "if I'd stayed, maybe Wendy wouldn't have relapsed."

"You can't be the reason for someone else's sobriety." When Jax looked at her curiously, Tara reminded him, "drunk daddy, remember? No," she pressed, twisting so as to bring her legs up and to the side, burrowing deeper into the couch. "If you would have stayed, you all would have been miserable. Maybe Abel wouldn't have been born premature or with a tear in his abdomen, but he still would have been hurt... just in a different way. And you never know. That could have been worse."

"Yeah, the kid got dealt a pretty shitty hand – a junkie mom and a deadbeat dad."

"Maybe at first," Tara allowed. Her honesty drew Jax's gaze away from Abel's incubator and towards her face. "But, Jax, you've come so far with him. Without prompting, you're thinking about what you have to do to take care of him. You're asking about his future eating habits, and you're bringing in things to read to him."

"Tara, it's not a children's book; it's the rambling thoughts of a dead man about an outlaw motorcycle club."

"Sure sounds a hell of a lot more interesting to me than _See Spot Run_."

"You say that now..." After playfully warning her, he unsnapped his kutte, removing a faded, unbound stack of typed pages. Jax shifted, lifted his hips up slightly to resituate himself, his right hand letting go of her so as to rest the length of his arm along the back of the couch. With his left, Jax removed the title page, setting it aside face down on the cushion beside him. Clearing his throat, he started reading. Tara closed her eyes to listen. "'Sometimes things start with a good idea. You realize there is a need, and you come up with an answer to that need. Other times, things just begin.

"The Sons of Anarchy was the name I came up with...'"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

A door slammed.

Tara looked up from the chart she was reading, pausing in her journey down the NICU hallway. She had been on her way to check in on a patient when the loud disturbance startled her – made her jump, nearly drop the files she was holding, and quickly scan the area to see where the situation that needed diffused was. She should have known.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Even through the closed door, she had no problem hearing Gemma Teller-Morrow yell at her son. Just twenty minute earlier, Tara had been so pleased to see Jax sitting with Abel. Other than to sign papers or check in quickly, it was his first legitimate daytime visit. After spotting him, she had stopped in Abel's room briefly to say hello before returning to her rounds, happy at the progress the father and son were making.

"Jesus Christ, mom," Jax responded. Tara had to inch closer to hear him. Though Gemma's abrupt and rude arrival had obviously piqued his temper, Jax was at least maintaining his control. His deeper tones and moderated volume made it more difficult to pick up what he was saying through the walls and closed door. "You can't do this kind of shit here. We're in a hospital; this is a NICU department. Show a little god damned respect."

"I know exactly where we are, Jackson. Don't forget that I've had two kids – a sick one myself, and don't you ever talk to me like I'm just some club whore again. Do you understand me?"

Through the open blinds, Tara watched as Jax looked his mother over, sneering. "If you want treated with respect, then act like you deserve it."

Gemma's back was towards her, so she couldn't see her facial expressions, but Tara could read her body language. Hips cocked and angled forward, fists clenched upon them, Gemma was spoiling for a fight... and she was getting one. "Is that you talking, Jax, or is it that stuck-up doctor bitch?"

"Don't talk about Tara that way," he warned his mother. "She has nothing to do with this. And what's your problem with her anyway?"

"She's changing you," Gemma insisted, pleaded. "Ever since Abel was born, you've been pushing me away, pushing the club away, and you've been holding her close."

"Mom, she's Abel's doctor." Jax sounded tired – like he couldn't even muster up the energy to have the same argument yet again.

"And she's poisoning you against us."

"You're paranoid and delusional," he dismissed crisply. "If I'm different since my kid was born, it's because I have a son now. Because I'm a father."

Slowly – word by word, acerbic statement by acerbic statement, the volume of Gemma's voice had decreased, though the animosity still rang loud and true. "Is that why you've been doubting Clay's every move – because of Abel?"

Jax confidently folded his arms over his chest. "Running to his old lady to complain about his VP? Maybe, if Clay were making sound decisions, I wouldn't have to question him." He then dropped his arms and became more aggressive, more hostile. "And don't dismiss me wanting to be a better man for my kid. Abel's opened my eyes to lot of shit that needs changed. Maybe, if I had noticed some of this before, he wouldn't be here," Jax swept his arms around the room in emphasis.

"So, you think abandoning your club, abandoning Clay, is how you prove yourself as a father?"

Jax rolled his eyes. "Don't be so dramatic, mom. I'm not abandoning anybody."

Gemma took a step forward, squared her shoulders. "Oh, so you've changed your mind, then? You're going to Nevada?"

"No. I'm not." When Gemma went to protest further, Jax kept talking. "I spoke with Uncle Jury. I explained the situation to him, asked him for help, and it's cool. He's agreed to store the guns for us until the new warehouse is up and running. Frankly, I have no idea why Clay's even going."

His mother seemed taken aback by that. "What do you mean?"

"Nevada is Mayan territory. Jury's taking a big enough risk helping us as it is. But Clay and everybody else riding into Indian Hills like they own it? They're just asking for trouble. We should be keeping a low profile, trucking the guns in at night anonymously, not rubbing this shit in the Mayans' faces."

Gemma tilted her chin up, challengingly. "You voice your concerns in church?"

"I did."

"And?"

"Clay paid them no mind."

"Well, then, you swallow your pride, and you accept what your president tells you," Gemma ordered him. "Clay knows what's best, and, if he thinks the club needs to ride to Indian Hills, then that's what you do. No questions, no temper-tantrums."

Jax smirked derisively. "I'm not the one slamming hospital room doors."

"You're going."

Jax reeled back as if struck. "You're giving me orders now?"

"Somebody has to, you have your head shoved so far up your..."

Interrupting her, Jax stepped into Gemma's personal space. His voice lowered to a whisper, so Tara had to practically press her ear up against the door. "You're my mother, and I love you, but you're just an old lady. Don't you ever try to tell me what to do again when it comes to _my _club."

But Gemma didn't back down. She pushed her chin up, and she returned her son's glare in equal if not fuller measure. "This isn't about the club; this is about you and Clay. He needs you."

Jax backed away, once more returning so that he was standing directly beside Abel's incubator. "No, my kid needs me."

Gemma's voice softened, became concerned. "Is there something wrong with Abel?"

Incredulously, Jax spat, "he was born ten weeks premature, tweaking, with a bum heart and a hole in his belly. There's always been something wrong with him."

"But nothing new? His conditioned hasn't gotten worse?"

Throwing up his arms, Jax railed, "how much worse could it be?"

Gemma's shoulders relaxed as she approached her son. She lifted a hand to cup his face. "Baby, you're becoming such a good father, and I couldn't be more proud of you, but Abel's getting better. You need to go to Nevada. It's what's best for everyone... Abel included."

"No, what's best for Abel is me staying here. I'm not leaving my son alone." Before Gemma could protest, Jax insisted, "Wendy's in rehab. I'm all he has."

As if he had slapped her, Gemma skittered away, the hand that had been touching his face dropping to clutch her chest. "What about me?"

Words so soft they belied the true menace in his tone, Jax replied, "do you really think I'm going to leave my son in the care of the woman who tried to kill his mother?" When Gemma gulped, he pressed, "I know you were the one who gave Wendy – _the junkie whore_ – that syringe full of crank. I'm not stupid, and you're not very subtle."

"What are you saying here, Jackson?"

Ridiculing her, he sarcastically asked, "what, do you need me to paint you a god damned picture? You," and he stabbed his right index finger towards her chest accusingly, "are not to see _my _son unless either Tara or I are with you."

Flabbergasted by everything she had just heard – especially Jax's closing ultimatum, Tara watched with wide, disbelieving eyes as Gemma Teller-Morrow nodded several times in acceptance, seemingly backing down. She rucked her purse up higher on her shoulder in preparation to leave. "Right." And then Gemma turned around, threw open the door, and stormed off, not even once stopping to acknowledge that Tara was standing right there, obviously listening into the conversation the older woman had just had with her son.

As Gemma left, Jax approached, coming up to stand directly in front of Tara. She quietly watched him observe her, his eyes painstakingly taking in her every feature. He didn't ask her how much she had overheard; he didn't offer any further details. Instead, Jax brought both of his hands up to her face, cupping it – his thumbs smoothing over the apples of her cheeks, his long fingers stretching into her hair and gently massaging her scalp. Tara gasped. "I didn't want to leave you either. I know something's wrong, I know you're scared, but I'm not going to let anything happen to you." Eyes intense with conviction, mouth pursed with fortitude, he finished, "that's a promise, Tara."

As he released her, he trailed his thumbs down her face, touching the corners of her mouth before finally separating. Unconsciously, Tara lifted her own fingers to her lips, ghosting the digits over where the trails of heat from his touch still lingered. She stood there for several minutes – breathless, silent, stunned, and then she turned away and went back to work.

…

Definitely pyloric stenosis.

The tests had confirmed it, the surgery was scheduled, and now all Tara had to do was manage to stay out of the little girl's line of fire. Closing and locking the on-call room door behind her, she made her way into the bathroom, observing her reflection. The vomit had initially hit her on the shoulder, but, on Tara's walk from her patient's hospital room, it had managed to run down not only her arm but also the front and back of her scrub top. There would be no way to remove the soiled shirt without getting the throw up in her hair. All she could do was smile.

It wasn't the little girl's fault. The poor thing was miserable, her family run ragged with worry and from trying to take care of their sick daughter. And, as a doctor – especially a neonatal surgeon, Tara had long since become impervious to bodily fluids. The vomit wasn't pleasant, but she had certainly had worse. Plus, she wasn't sure if anything could erase the high she had experienced earlier that morning.

Turning away from the mirror, she carefully made her way towards her locker, not wanting to spread the throw up any more than she already had. Opening it, Tara removed her shower supplies bag, electing to retrieve a clean pair of scrubs once she was finished bathing. Closing and locking the bathroom door behind her – more out of habit than necessity seeing as how the on-call room door was also locked, she flipped on the hot tap, quickly stripping while she waited for the water to warm. St. Thomas' plumping was anything but up-to-date or top-of-the-line. Sometimes it took a few seconds for the hot water to kick in.

For a moment, she debated on what to do with the scrub top. She could rinse it and then have it washed, but that seemed like more effort than what it was worth, so she just elected to pitch it, wrapping the shirt in a plastic bag first and then tossing it. The rest of her clothes she gathered in a pile and set on the sink. She'd put them with her other dirty laundry once she was finished. That handled, she stepped into the shower, all thoughts except Jax's touch upon her face fleeing immediately.

Tara knew she needed to let the moment go, but she couldn't. It haunted her, made her crave more. She could still feel his fingers sliding through her hair, his slightly rough and warm thumbs smoothing over her lips. As she stepped beneath the spray of the water, quickly wetting her hair, she closed her eyes, instantly seeing his own while he was promising to keep her safe. He had been so intense, so focused, so determined, and Tara had been the only person who had existed for Jax while he spoke with her. She had known obsession and possession, and this wasn't either of those things, but it was obsessive, and it was possessive but in a way that made her feel cherished, not controlled. For a little girl whose mother died when she was young and whose father hadn't cared enough to not kill himself with grief and drink afterwards, Jax's attention was an all-together new and thrilling experience. Tara knew she needed to push him away, and that what she was feeling was too good to be true, but that was easier said than done, especially when she was with Jax.

Needing to get back to work, she opened her eyes, and she forced any and all thoughts except for those about the tasks at hand away. She shampooed her hair; she rinsed her hair. She conditioned it. Tara quickly scrubbed her body clean and then turned off the water, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around her naked form as she stepped out of the shower. With bare and still slightly damp feet, she crossed the bathroom, unlocked the door, and stepped out into the on-call room, heading straight towards her locker. She was halfway through gathering her clean clothes when she noticed them.

Pink rose petals.

Tara choked on an inhalation of fright, dropping the undergarments she had been holding onto the floor. Nervously, she glanced around the room, looking for some explanation besides the obvious one for as to why, when she had gone into the shower, her locker had been free of the ripped apart flowers, but now, ten minutes later, there were petals strewn throughout all of her things. Nobody was there, though. She couldn't say that it was nothing more than just a practical joke – someone not realizing what the seemingly innocent prank would mean to her, how it would make her feel.

The HVAC system kicked on above her head, making Tara jump. She closed her eyes in relief when she realized what it was, but then she felt cool air brushing against her bare, wet skin, and she immediately felt sick to her stomach. Picking up her dropped things and then grabbing a pair of clean scrubs, Tara slammed her locker shut and ran back into the bathroom, locking the door once more. She refused to think about how someone had slipped inside of the on-call room when she had locked that door, too; she closed her mind to the knowledge that, while someone was getting into her locker, she had been a room away – naked, vulnerable, clueless; and she absolutely denied the instinct to confide in someone, to confide in Jax.

What Tara did allow herself to think about, however, was the fact that just a few minutes earlier she had been so happy, so foolishly willing to forget what she was running and hiding from in order to focus on the contentment she had been discovering in Charming. That had been a mistake. If nothing else – terrifying or not, those rose petals had served as an important reminder as to why she couldn't allow Jax to get any closer. Her life was too complicated, and all she had to offer anybody was a lifetime of insecurities and a danger nobody else seemed to believe in or take seriously. That – _she –_ was the last thing either Jax or Abel needed.

After quickly dressing, Tara slipped her feet into her tennis shoes and then threw her still soaking wet and uncombed hair up with a clip. Forgoing any makeup, she cleaned up the bathroom and then threw her dirty laundry in her locker and grabbed her purse, trying her best to ignore the rose petals. They'd still be there the next time she came into the on-call room, and Tara didn't have time to get rid of them then if she wanted to run a quick errand before returning to work. Crossing to the door that led back out into the hallway, she found it locked once more. She easily disengaged it and then stepped out into the public portion of the hospital.

"We need to talk."

Her purse slipped from her trembling fingers, landing loudly on the tile floor. The sound only made Tara recoil a second time. She bit her lip to keep from crying out in alarm and made no move to pick up her bag.

"Jesus, Doc. Jumpy much?" Tara didn't respond, and Gemma kept pushing, apparently amused with her taunts. "What has you so skittish? After all, we both know you're not that timid." The older woman's tone changed – became insinuating, salacious. "Doing something naughty in the bathroom?"

Gemma's crudeness and sheer lack of respect were enough to banish Tara's anxiety, inciting her wrath instead. Picking up her purse and slinging it over her shoulder, she fired back, "what do you want, Gemma?"

"Oh, I think you already know. After all, you listened to the whole god damned conversation, didn't you?"

She felt her face constrict and screw up in vexation, but she refrained from unleashing her irritation. Nodding once while she took a deep breath, Tara briefly closed her eyes while she centered herself. Jaw clenched, she fiercely stared at Gemma. "I didn't rat you out to Jax."

"You think that's what I'm worried about?" Gemma snorted... like the very idea was ridiculous. "Jax will get over me slipping Wendy the crank. He's pissed right now, because he's thinking about all the bad shit that would have happened to all of us if I'd gotten caught, but it'll blow over."

The audacity of the woman standing in front of her... "I think we both know it's a little more than that."

Gemma's brows raised in challenge. "Do we, Doc?"

She wasn't going to fight her about Jax's motivations. If she wanted to think so little about her own son, then so be it. "If you don't want to talk about Wendy, what's this all about?"

Gemma took several predatory steps forward, closing the distance between them. Purse slung over her shoulder, she crossed her arms in challenge over her chest. "I want to know exactly what you're doing to twist Jax up."

"I'm not doing anything," she protested heatedly. Her own arms came up across her chest.

"Bullshit." Before Tara could defend herself, Gemma continued, "Jax is so confused right now, I barely recognize him. He's pushing away the very thing he needs the most right now."

"What," she spat out contemptuously. "Samcro?"

Again, Gemma took a step forward, leaning over Tara. "Don't speak about things you don't understand, little girl."

"Or what? Are you going to shoot me up with crank, too?"

The older woman laughed, though the sound held no trace of warmth or humor, and she stepped back, going to stand against the opposite wall. "Nah, I'm not that predictable." And then she winked. "For you, Doc, it'd be something different, something special."

"If we're through, there's something I need to do."

She started to leave but then Gemma called out, "don't walk away from me, bitch." Pivoting around on the balls of her feet, Tara once more came face to face with the other woman, raising a single brow in question, in challenge. "We're not through until I say we're through."

She sighed – tired of the bravado, tired of the threats, just tired. "If you're so worried about Jax and his relationship with the club, then talk to him about it. Oh wait," Tara paused, smirked. "You already did. How'd that turn out for you again?"

"You think your'e so damn clever, don't you? You come into town with your big words and your _concern_, and you think that you can have whatever you want."

"Yes," Tara mocked, "I moved here with every intention of taking Jax away from you, because I knew his ex-wife was an addict who would overdose while pregnant with his son, and I knew that he had differences with his step-father that could be exploited for my own purposes. You not only give me far too much credit and Jax not enough," she pointed out, "but you're also paranoid. If Jax and the club are having problems, then that's between them. I have _nothing _to do with it."

"So, all those nights that he spends here with his son, with _you_, you're not whispering sweet-nothings into his ear, trash talking Samcro?"

"Like you said yourself, Gemma, I wouldn't know enough about the Sons of Anarchy to even attempt to sway Jax."

Gemma seemed to stand up straighter. Pouncing, she queried, "but you don't deny that your relationship with my son has gone well past the professional. What happened to 'I'm just Abel's doctor,' huh?"

Lifting her chin in assertiveness and poise, Tara stated, "Jax and I are friends."

"Jax has enough friends; he has his club. He doesn't need you."

"Well, I think we'll let Jax be the judge of that." When Gemma went to respond, Tara kept talking. "Don't you ever get sick of it... this hard ass persona that's trying to fight something that doesn't even exist? I feel like every _conversation_ we've had since I met you has been about the same thing, but I'm not a danger to your relationship with your son, Gemma; you are." Holding out her hands in front of her to physically show that she was done with the other woman, Tara warned, requested, "just... stay away from me."

Without waiting for Jax's mother to respond, Tara walked away. She didn't stop walking until she was outside and standing beside her car, unlocking the door and getting in before she could second-guess what she was about to do. The ride to the room she rented only took a few minutes, but Tara found herself constantly looking in her mirrors, checking over her shoulders, making sure that no one was following her. She didn't notice anything suspicious, but that didn't necessarily mean that there wasn't someone there. The hair standing up on the back of her neck was just one thing that made her feel like she was being watched.

Unlocking the door to her room, Tara half expected to find it trashed, or maybe there'd be some more rose petals there as well. The ironic thing was that she didn't even like pink roses. They were just what _he_ had given her on their first date, so he made them out to be her favorite in his mind. But the room was clean... or, at least, it looked the way it had when she had last been there. Unlabeled boxes still full of unpacked books, personal belongings, and clothes filled most of the available space. Otherwise, the room was empty of anything unique to her – the furniture basic and indistinctive.

Ignoring everything else, Tara moved towards the nightstand, pulling open the drawer to reveal a small, slightly rectangular locked box. Sorting through the keys she held in her hand, she located the one she needed for the safe. For the first time since Tara had found those rose petals in her locker, her fingers weren't shaking. The key fit smoothly, turned easily, and, when she opened the lid, there were only two things inside: a Beretta 3032 Tomcat, already loaded – always loaded, and a box of bullets. Removing the gun from the box, Tara slammed the lid shut and then replaced it in the drawer.

Standing up straight, she held the weapon out before her in both of her hands... just looking at. It was lightweight, compact. She had purchased it in Chicago. Although she'd never used it before, the gun helped her feel safer – like she was actively doing something to protect herself versus sitting back and hoping that someone else would do it for her. Needing to have that feeling, Tara slipped the gun into the back waistband of her scrub bottoms, making sure to pull both her undershirt and her scrub top well over the semi-automatic. The cool metal, quickly warming, against her bare skin was extremely reassuring. She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and then exhaled slowly in relief. Needing to get back to work, Tara left the room she rented, locking the door behind her.

…

Despite the fact that someone had gotten into the locked on-call room and slipped pink rose petals into her locker – something Tara was desperately hoping was a mere coincidence, she still felt safer at the hospital than she did her room back at the inn, especially now that she was carrying her gun with her. It made moving about the hospital a little more cumbersome – having to remember where all the metal detectors were and avoiding those places, but that was a small price to pay for her peace of mind. The bigger price was sticking to her resolve to avoid Jax, only seeing him and Abel when it was called for medically.

With this in mind, she had avoided the little boy's NICU room all afternoon and evening, the nurses perfectly capable of checking on his vitals and marking them down on his chart. And, after Tara finished with her shift, she took refuge in her office. At first, she killed time with work, catching up on the more administrative duties she disliked and procrastinated, but, eventually, there was nothing left to do, to distract herself with, and Tara had closed up and locked her office behind her on her way, once more, to the on-call room.

There, she had showered again, taking her time afterwards to blow dry her hair. The routine nature of the actions were grounding. Plus, they helped to eat up more time. After she was dressed in a pair of jeans and yet another light sweater, however, there was nothing else to do. She'd tried reading – first, medical journals and then a novel someone else had left sitting about, but neither had held her attention. She'd gotten online, looking for real estate in Charming, but it was hard to think about putting down roots when she wouldn't even allow herself the company of the only friend she had in town, and Tara had never been one for social media or pop culture gossip, so the typical internet time-sucks were irrelevant to her.

Bored, jittery, and needing to stretch her legs – get some fresh air, Tara stood from the chair she'd been using, making sure her gun was secure against the small of her back before leaving the on-call room. She took her time making her way through the hospital, electing to follow the lesser-used hallways and taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Movement helped. So, too, did the first deep breath of the cool night air that she took as soon as she stepped outside. Her eyelids flickered shut as she simply enjoyed the small pleasure.

"_Fuck_!" The scream and then the sound of something striking the brick wall of the hospital made Tara flinch. She didn't even have to look to know who was outside with her. Deciding that she'd just slip away before he noticed her, Tara turned around, sliding her keycard through the scanner. Her hands were on the door's handle, about to pull it open, when he said, "don't." She paused, sighed. Her eyes fell shut, and her chin fell to rest against her chest. After several silent, tense moments, Tara finally turned around, met his gaze. "You've been avoiding me all day."

"I've been busy." The lie passed through her lips before Tara could really even consider it or how poor of an excuse it was. In response, Jax merely folded his arms over his chest and quirked a lone brow up in provocation. "It's complicated."

"Did Gemma say something to you? She was pretty pissed when she left Abel's room this morning after our... _talk_."

"We had words," Tara admitted. After all, there was no sense in denying her confrontation with Gemma; Jax wouldn't believe her anyway. "But that's not why..."

"So, then it's about whatever this shit is that has you scared," he concluded by process of elimination. He nodded in confirmation for her. Removing his cigarettes from his pocket, Jax plucked one from the pack with his mouth, lighting it with a quick flick of his thumb seconds later. After a long draw, he removed it from between his lips, blowing the smoke out through his nose. Crossing the width of the loading dock, he came to rest against the wall of the hospital, leaning against it. Lifting one foot, he put that, too, against the bricks, angling his knee out in front of him. Tara was surprised when, instead of pressing her about why she was avoiding him, why she was scared, Jax changed the subject.

"You heard Gemma and I talking about Nevada this morning, right – Indian Hills?"

It was a rhetorical question, but she answered it anyway. "Yeah."

"Jury isn't really my uncle." Sensing that he needed to talk to someone, Tara couldn't just walk away from him. So, she moved closer, coming to stand beside him while leaning sideways, her hip and shoulder braced against the wall. "He and my dad served together in Nam, remained friends after they got out. He's president of the Devil's Tribe MC... or, at least, he was."

Instantly concerned, Tara queried, "oh, god, Jax? Did something happen to him? I know you were worried about Clay and your friends riding into Nevada because of a rival club."

"Yeah. The Mayans struck. They shot up Jury's clubhouse, but he's okay. That's not what I meant." He paused in his account to take a drag off his cigarette, turning his face away slightly so as not to blow the smoke on her. After licking his lips, he continued, "Clay patched them over. The Devil's Tribe is now the Sons of Anarchy, Indian Hills, Nevada charter."

If his bitter tone wasn't evidence enough, the tiny pieces of cell phone beneath her booted feet told Tara that Jax wasn't pleased with this latest development. "And this is bad?"

"I don't know," he shrugged, looked towards the sky. "It's good for Samcro, but Jury and his guys? They didn't want this. They're bikers, but they're not outlaw. They run shady but legitimate businesses. I asked him to house our guns, because we had no one else to turn to, and he agreed as a favor to me, to my father. But that wasn't enough for Clay. He wanted to push back at the Mayans – more of his damn revenge power trip. What he's really doing, though, is pushing us towards war."

Tara did not want to focus on _that_. She'd seen what gang wars were like while she lived and worked in Chicago. They always blew back on the innocent – the families, the women, the children, the poor idiot walking by at the wrong time. So, instead, she asked, "why did Jury agree then if, I'm guessing, he didn't want to... what did you call it?... patch over?"

Jax took several final puffs from his cigarette before rubbing it out against the brick wall and then tossing it away. "The Devil's Tribe was fifteen men, twenty max. The Sons of Anarchy? We stretch all the way up and down the entire west coast. We have a charter in Belfast. When we come calling, you answer. Jury had no choice."

"So, now what? You said there was a shoot out?"

"Yeah, a couple of men were hurt, nothing serious, but Jury's going to have the Mayans up his ass permanently now that they know his MC's SOA. He said Clay promised him some guys, but basically they're on their own. They'll make it, or they won't. Clay doesn't care as long as his guns keep running."

"It was Jury on the phone, then?"

"Yeah," Jax scoffed. Sarcasm bled through his words. "_He _wanted to give me the courtesy of letting me know what went down – not Clay, not my own president." Wearily, he lifted his hands to scrub them over his face, eventually cupping them before his mouth and exhaling harshly. After dropping his hands once more to his side, Jax turned so that he was facing her. "I told Jury I was sorry that this happened, about how it went down, but my apology doesn't mean shit. I should have stopped it."

Tara had to fight the urge to reach out and touch his face. She wanted to sooth away his repentance, his frustration, with her touch. "Do you regret not going?"

"It wouldn't have mattered," Jax answered. He glanced down at his feet, scuffed his tennis shoes against the cement, and shrugged. He then stunned Tara by reaching out and wrapping his right hand around her left hip, clasping it tightly yet tenderly at the same time. He pulled them closer together. "Clay has his hooks into all the other guys too deep. They don't see what he's doing, and I don't have enough sway in the club to fight him – not now, at least."

"Well, maybe your father's manuscript with give you some ideas on how to handle the situation with Clay and the rest of the club," Tara suggested, wanting to give him something to hold onto.

"Yeah," Jax agreed. But he was distracted – the thumb of his hand holding her slipping under the hem of her top to smooth over the bare skin of her waist. "Maybe."

Then his hand moved – his arm wrapping around her as his fingers landed at the small of her back... right on top of the gun she was carrying. "Tara?"

His brow was unsettled and furrowed, his gaze narrowed in question and unease. "I know how to use it."

"That's good to know, but that's not exactly what I was worried about." Rapidly, his eyes searched her gaze. Still, he didn't remove his hand from where it now rested over top of the weapon. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Honestly?" And she laughed self-deprecatingly, rotating until her back hit the wall behind her. Jax followed her movement, coming to stand in front of her – his arms lifting to cage her inside of his embrace, his hands braced against the brick. "I'm not even sure if anything's wrong. I could just be jumping to conclusions."

He contemplated her closely. Tara didn't know if he was searching for clues or simply wanting to confirm that she was really alright and in front of him. Perhaps it was a combination of the two things. Eventually, though, Jax relaxed. He nodded in acquiescence, agreeing silently to not press the issue further – his forehead dropping to rest against her own. He sighed, his heat of his breath moist against her mouth. Tara licked her lips, and she could taste his cigarette smoke.

When his hips shifted closer and settled between the juncture of her thighs, Tara knew that she needed to pull away; she should have pulled away. But she didn't. Because she also knew what was going to happen next, and, despite everything she had promised herself about not burdening Jax with her problems, she wanted him – at least once, at least while there was still some doubt that she and anyone close to her were in danger.

When he finally kissed her, Jax was anything but shy. Instead, he was demanding, all-consuming. He teased her lips, sucking on them before he took the bottom one between his teeth and bit down. Tara gasped, her lips falling open, and Jax took advantage of the moment to slip his tongue inside of her mouth. He kissed her breathless – stole it away from her, and then he continued to kiss her until Tara was practically wrapped around him: her arms encircling his neck – fingers locked in and tangled through his hair, her right leg molded around his hip, bringing their lower bodies into even closer contact.

He ended the kiss with a stipulation, with a plea. "Don't avoid me, Tara." She couldn't respond, for she was too busy trying to fill her lungs with oxygen after they had been deprived for so long. She felt lightheaded in the most pleasant of ways. "Now, let's go see my kid." And then Jax took her by the hand and led them both inside for the rest of the night.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

When Tara was a little girl, she read for companionship; she read for escape. It was lonely growing up an only child, and it was even lonelier, later, growing up as the only child of the widowed town drunk. While parents were kind enough towards her during the bright light of day, they whispered judgements and worry about what kind of influence she would be upon their children late at night, and that kind of distrust had a way of infecting even those too young to understand what they were hearing. Tara didn't blame them, however. She was a smart child, precocious. She knew exactly what her father was and wasn't – hence, her need to disappear into the pages of books.

As Tara grew older, her reasons for reading changed but never her love of the pastime. Without a mother or a mentoring female figure that she was close to, books taught Tara about life – about boys, and relationships, and sex. In college, they were her distraction; in med school, her guilty pleasure. There was never enough time to study, but she always made sure there was at least a few minutes every day to dive into a story.

Now? Now, books were variety. It was so easy for Tara to lose herself in her work, to make her entire existence about medicine. Reading reminded her that there was life outside of the hospital. They had, up until recently, been Tara's only means of spicing up the day – or night, too. In the same way that she often failed to make time for herself because of her devotion to her profession, Tara had also lived a very sheltered life – by choice. She wasn't a risk taker. Every decision she made was carefully thought out and planned. That's what made her such a great surgeon. She was meticulous. But that left no room for spontaneity or adventure... or at least it hadn't until recently.

Taking a cue from Jax, she had decided to eat her lunch in Abel's NICU room. She had an apple, and a sandwich, and a bottle of water. And she had a book, too. While she ate, she planned on reading out loud to the little boy. On the menu for that afternoon? _Snow Falling on Cedars_. It wasn't the musings of the war veteran, MC founding John Teller, but Tara was looking forward to it anyway. It surprised her how much she was enjoying _The Life and Death of Samcro_, but her taste usually skewed towards historical fiction – the intensity and immediacy of the past intriguing her, and her novel of choice that day, she hoped, would prove to offer exactly that.

Turning the corner towards Abel's room, she skimmed the back of the book, reading the reviews. If it weren't for habits born from necessity, she wouldn't have noticed the shadow moving away from the window that looked in on Abel's incubator. For a brief second, desire overrode rationale, and she wanted that shadow to be Jax, but there was no reason for him to dart away from his son's room like he had been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to. Plus, after what had happened between them the night before, Tara knew that Jax wouldn't just leave without seeing her first.

No, she knew that movement, that cunning duplicity. It had stalked her, haunted her. Despite wanting to deny the knowledge that was staring boldly back at her, Tara knew, if she didn't want to be the victim and if she wanted to protect those growing ever closer to her, then she had to confront the truth of her reality: it hadn't just been a phone call, and those pink rose petals weren't just a strange and cruel coincidence.

Joshua Kohn was in Charming.

…

Unser. She had to speak to Unser. She'd tell him about Kohn. She'd tell him that he had broken the restraining order and that he was in Charming. Jax trusted Unser, and she trusted Jax. She'd confide in the police chief, and then Kohn would be forced to leave town. He'd be arrested or at least warned away, and she'd be safe again. And Unser would keep his eye out for her in the future. He'd make sure that Kohn never returned to Charming – for her, for the town, for the club.  
With this singular purpose, Tara made her way into the police station, caught off guard by how relaxed of an atmosphere it had. Oh, it was busy – people moving about this way and that in the small, crowded space – a finely choreographed routine, and there was a constant din that spoke of activity, but no one asked her to sign in. She was free to walk through the precinct without censure. She understood that Charming was a small town, but it made Tara question if they even secured the evidence locker. Could she stroll right on back to the cells? Maybe they were patrolled by the honor system, too. It was hilarious, and frightening, and so very foretelling all at the same time.

It wasn't difficult to find Chief Unser's office – what, with there only being two, and his name was proudly displayed on one of the open doors. Before she could knock, however, or announce her presence, or even just enter without request or permission, Tara heard a voice that was newly and unfortunately recognizable and another that was hauntingly so say a name that, if allowed, could become more familiar to her than her own. Without pausing to consider her actions, she slipped into Unser's office, closing the door almost entirely behind her – leaving it open just a hairsbreadth in order to eavesdrop on the conversation taking place across the short hall.

"Teller never showed. I thought you said he had a history with this guy?"

"He did; he _does_," Hale stressed. Tara could detect the indignation in Hale's tone, though it wasn't clear if he was vexed with the situation or with Kohn's seemingly always present smug superiority. "His father was friends with him. They served together. And John Teller's practically revered by that white trash band of misfits he started, especially by Jax."

"So, then, why wasn't he there?"

"What does it matter?" When Kohn responded with a contemptuous snort, Hale insisted, "you got the pictures – pictures of the Sons of Anarchy engaged in a shoot out with the Mayans, using what were, no doubt, illegal weapons, and, when it comes to Samcro, if you hurt one, you hurt them all."

"No, Teller should have been there. He's the one I need dirt on."

"Why?" After an unexplained, silent pause – for Tara obviously couldn't see what the two men were doing, she heard the deputy chief continue. "Trust me when I say that no one wants to see Jax put away more than I do. That guy walks around this town like he owns it, like he's untouchable. He always has. You should have seen him during high school... when he actually bothered to show up. But it's like you have a hard on for this guy."

Dispassionately... and, quite frankly, also condescendingly – like he was taking a child through a simple lesson, Kohn replied, "if you want to kill the monster, you have to cut off its head."

"I get that, but Jax isn't in charge; Clay is. And Clay was in Nevada."

Kohn chuckled humorlessly. "The Sons of Anarchy isn't just a one headed monster; it has two. Clay is the past and the present. If we take him down, we cripple Samcro, but we don't kill it. In order to make sure that Samcro never recovers, we need to take down its future, too, and that's Teller – the second and, from what I've gathered, smarter and less impulsive head."

Hale snorted. "Jax Teller – smarter and less impulsive? That's the first time anyone's ever said that about him. How do you figure?"

"He didn't go to Indian Hills. He's been less involved with the club, and there's a rumor going around that he and Clay have been butting heads – that Jax has disagreed with many of his rather bold and not so under the radar moves recently."

"Look, if Jax is showing signs of breaking old behavior patterns, it has nothing to do with suddenly becoming wiser." Tara heard Hale sigh, and then she picked up on the creak of leather – like someone sitting down in a desk chair. "He's been going through some pretty deep personal shit recently. I'm sure he's just distracted."

Kohn seemed to pounce on that. His now eager voice faded somewhat; perhaps he had moved deeper into the deputy chief's office. Luckily, however, Tara could still hear both men. "Tell me more about this."

"His wife's..."

"Wait," Kohn interrupted. "Teller's married?" Tara knew damn well that Kohn knew every little thing about Jax. He wasn't genuinely expressing surprised inquiry; he was fishing _and _trying to come across as though he were still getting his bearings on the case, on the Sons, on Jax.

"It's just a formality. Paperwork hasn't come through yet. He'll be divorced soon enough." Hale's words and tone dismissed the relationship. "Anyway, his wife's an addict, and, apparently, she used while she was pregnant, because their son was born premature and with several serious health complications. He's had multiple surgeries. Jax hasn't been as involved with the club, because he's been at the hospital... with his son."

Sarcastically, Kohn remarked, "yes, I can see how the _hospital_ would be a distraction." Shifting topics, he asked, "so, no moral code and bad taste in women..." She couldn't help but bristle at Kohn's words, knowing they were meant towards her. Even when he didn't know she was there, he couldn't let go of his passive-aggressive, obsessed hatred. " … but he's a good father?"

"You have to understand something about Samcro: family is extremely important to these guys. Their definition of it isn't exactly textbook. They have more ex-wives and unpaid child support than you could imagine, but, if you're a part of their inner circle – and Abel Teller is – then that's sacred."

"That also sounds like a button we can press."

She could hear the pleasure zinging through Hale's voice when he said, "now, you're reading my mind, Agent Kohn."

With anger she couldn't express burning a hole through her chest – anger at Charming's short-sighted deputy chief, anger at Kohn, anger towards herself, Tara's vision blurred with barely restrained tears. Quietly, she slipped out of Unser's office. She didn't need to hear anymore. Kohn was in town because of her. He was going after Jax, after the Sons, because of her. The full weight of the ATF was going to be breathing down Samcro's neck because of her. Before she exploded with wrath, trepidation, and contrition, she had to get out of there.

"Oh, hey Doc." Tara came to a skidding halt just inside of the bullpen. "Were you looking for me? Hope you weren't waiting too long, but these cancer drugs really do a number on my system." Chief Unser paused, seemingly waiting for her to respond. When she didn't, when she just shakily exhaled and blinked rapidly in an attempt to curb her emotions, he tilted his head to the side, observed her more closely. "Is something wrong, Doc?" Still, she didn't respond, and he fell silent as well, allowing the voices from Hale's office to carry to where they were standing just outside the little hallway. Jax's name was mentioned; realization dawned upon Unser's wrinkled face. "Ah, I see you've met our _esteemed_ ATF visitor."

Swallowing thickly, Tara responded, "more or less."

"That smug prick might be an even bigger pain in my ass than Hale. And that's saying something." She found the police chief's opinion of the two men amusing, but, in her anxiety, what was supposed to be laughter came across as a choked sob. Unser was quick to reassure her. "But don't you worry. Jax'll be fine. He and the club are too smart and have been doing this for too long to be taken down by Agent Kohn and my eager yet naïve idiot of a deputy chief. If you want, though," he offered, already reaching into his pocket to pull out his cell. "I can give Jax a call, have him come get you."

The last thing Tara wanted was to stay in that police station for another second; the last thing she – or Jax for that matter – needed was for Kohn to see them together and realize that they were aware of his presence in town. So, shaking her head in refusal, she simply said, "I have to go." Unser didn't even have a chance to protest before Tara was gone.

…

At that point, avoidance wouldn't work. Whether Kohn knew about her involvement with Jax or not – though he had certainly insinuated that he did while talking to Hale, it was too late. He was already in town, and he was already after the Sons. What Tara didn't know was whether the case was his excuse for being in Charming or if she was his excuse for going after Jax. Either way, the damage had already been done. Her only course of action was to not make the situation any worse.

In that light, Tara knew what she had to do. First, she needed to tell Jax everything – not only about the past she was running from but also about how that past had caught up to her and, now, he and his club were going to be suffering the consequences. She had to end things between them... whatever they were. No more late night discussions on the loading dock; no more falling asleep beside him on the couch in Abel's NICU room while he read out loud from his father's manifesto. While she would still treat his son (suddenly dropping Abel as a patient would only look more suspicious – like she had something to hide, like she was guilty of something), that was all it could be.

Tara wasn't sure if she was grateful or dismayed by the fact that, in all likelihood – once he learned of her role in bringing the ATF down on Samcro, Jax wouldn't fight her on the changes to their relationship.

That did not mean, however, that she called Jax and asked him to meet her as soon as she left the precinct. And that didn't mean that she'd been waiting for him to show up at the hospital, her confession, apology, and recommendation perched upon the tip of her tongue. Instead, Tara had been purposefully staying away from Abel's room. She'd left her cell phone in her office, and she'd spent the afternoon in a daze, wandering around the hospital without purpose or point. Though she knew what she had to do, Tara didn't know how to do it.

In the back of her mind... hell, in the forefront of her mind, she'd always known that things between she and Jax would come down to them going their separate ways, but that didn't mean that she was prepared for that to happen so soon. In one breath, she had been fighting her attraction, her connection, with him since the moment they had met; in the next, she had been purposefully trying to get closer. He and his son were the last things Tara had been expecting when she'd moved to, ran to, decided to hide in Charming, and now she didn't know how to stop wanting them in her life.

"I thought we agreed that you wouldn't avoid me?"

Tara was in a not often used stairwell, sitting halfway up a flight of steps, when Jax approached her from behind. She looked up from where she had been staring at her shoes, watching as she twisted her fingers almost to the point of pain, but she didn't turn around to look at him. "I'm not... I mean, I am, but..." Sighing, she went with the truth. "It's not you, Jax; it's everyone, everything."

He came to sit beside her. "It sounds like you could use a break." Tara angled her face towards him, noticing that he was observing her intently. Yet, despite the fact that he had believed her to be purposefully staying away from him, there was a lightness to Jax that Tara didn't often see. It was beautiful, and she hated that she was about to crush it. "A change of scenery."

"Jax, there's something that I need to..."

"Before you say no," he interrupted her, grinning, "just let me get my sales pitch out first, a'ight?" Jax didn't wait for her to respond. Perhaps he sensed her melancholy and didn't want to risk that she would turn him down. "There's this town charity event that my mom's hosting – boring as shit."

Despite herself, Tara laughed. "Wow, Teller. You're a natural born salesman."

"I try," he retorted smoothly, quickly. "Anyway, it's going to be awful, but I have to go, and I thought you should come, too."

"Because your mother would love that."

"Forget Gemma," Jax automatically responded. "I'll have a better time if you're there, and you seem like you could use the fresh air. You know, there's more to Charming than the hospital's loading dock."

Raising a brow at his teasing irony, she stated, "I'm aware of the fact."

Jax didn't let up. "There will be a ton of good food, Elvis will be there, and fireworks. And nobody blows shit up like Opie."

It was tempting. _He _was tempting. If he had asked her 24 hours earlier, she would have said yes. And maybe, if it would have just been a club party, she still would have agreed to go with him, but they couldn't afford to tweak Kohn's nose any further by showing up at a town event together. So, despite how inviting his offer sounded, Tara knew her answer had to be no, and, despite how adorable he was being, she was going to have to be the opposite; she was going to have to be cold and detached.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

She went to stand up, but he stopped her by grabbing her hand and pulling her back down beside him. "Why not?"

Adamantly, she argued, "it just isn't, Jax," pulling her fingers free and making a second attempt to move away from him. That time, he didn't prevent her from doing so, and Tara skipped down the remaining few risers until she was standing on the landing below him.

"If this is because of Gemma...?"

She scoffed, cutting him off. "Trust me, your mother is the least of my worries." Pacing and to no avail trying to rub the tension from her forehead, Tara said, "Jax, we need to talk."

"Oh. I get it."

His delighted realization made her pause, glance up. "You do?"

"This is about me kissing you." He had a cocky grin on his face.

"No, that has nothing..."

"Last night, everything was okay, but, since then, you've had all day to think about it, and you're freaking out."

"I'm not freaking..."

"I knew what I was doing when I kissed you." He stood up. "I wanted to kiss you." He slowly made his way down the stairs so that he was standing directly before her. "I want to kiss you again. Now."

Realizing that she wasn't getting through to him, Tara decided to be blunt. "I have a stalker."

Taken about by her confession, by her sudden shift in topic, Jax blinked several times, adjusting. And then she watched as the playfulness was pushed from his face and replaced with rage and concern. He took a step back, clenched his hands into fists at his side. "What?" A muscle ticked in his jaw.

"It started back when I was still living in Chicago – during my internship. I briefly dated this guy, and, when I tried to end it, things... escalated. They got a little crazy."

She could see his mind working as he put together the pieces she had already provided him with and combined them with this new information. "He followed you?" Tara nodded in acquiescence. "He got violent with you?"

Tara had her arms wrapped around her torso... as if trying to physically hold herself together, to protect herself. "Josh is very intense. He didn't... doesn't like it when I don't do what he wants, and he became really possessive, controlling." Wanting him to believe her, needing Jax to know how hard she had fought back, how hard she had worked to try and prevent what was currently happening, she insisted, "I tried to get help. I went to his superiors and complained, but that just made it worse. I went to three different precincts before somebody would finally grant me a restraining order against him. And then I moved here, thinking maybe 2,000 miles between us would be enough to keep him away."

Jax narrowed his eyes in examination. "Tara, what aren't you telling me?" He seemed to know the answer already; he just didn't want to admit it. "Who is this guy that made him somebody nobody would help you with?"

Closing her eyes in shame, she whispered her confession. "He's ATF." Jax swore harshly, causing Tara to look at him once again just in time to see him pivot away from her. With his back towards her, she delivered the final blow, "and he's here – in Charming. He's after me. He broke into the on-call room when I was showering, put something in my locker. And then I saw him outside of Abel's room this morning." At that, Jax spun back around, his features fairly vibrating with fury. "So, I went to tell Unser, but Kohn... Josh, he was already there – talking to Hale. He's..."

" … coming after me, too," Jax concluded correctly. He grimaced, shook his head in an attempt to restrain his temper. "Son of a bitch."

Tara rushed to add, "I don't know if your club is just his excuse to come after me, or if he's after you because of your connection to me, but, either way, Jax, I'm sorry. Oh god," she cried, having to look up to stem her tears from falling. "I'm so sorry."

"Hey," and he grabbed her arms as well in his attempt to capture her attention. His grip was rough, but Jax made sure to temper his touch so that he wouldn't hurt her. "This isn't your fault." When she went to protest, he slid his hands from her upper arms, across her shoulders, over her neck, and then cupped her face. "I mean it, Tara. You're allowed to live your life. Just because this psycho is obsessed with you..."

"But as soon as I found out who you were, what you did," she insisted, unable to accept Jax's forgiveness, "I should have stopped things between us."

His brows raised in emphasis. "You did... or, at least, you tried to."

"I should have tried harder."

Rubbing his thumbs over her cheekbones, Jax promised her, "I'm going to get rid of him, he's going to leave you alone, and you're going to be safe, Tara."

She didn't have a chance to respond before he pulled away and removed his cell phone from his pocket. Pacing away from her on the small landing, Jax dialed, and, after the person on the other line picked up, she heard him say, "Hale's new ATF boyfriend? That's who Tara's running scared from." She didn't know who he was talking to, and she couldn't hear what the other person said. "You need to handle this or I will." Jax must have received a protest, because he ordered, "just do your damn job, Chief: arrest him, send him back to Chicago, and make it clear to him that, if he ever comes back here again, he'll never leave."

Tara gasped, realizing Jax's implied threat. At the sound of her agitation, he steadily met her gaze – no hesitancy, no apology present. She found his conviction both intimidating and reassuring. As if sensing her discord, Jax crossed the space separating them, coming to stand directly before her. Tara bit her lip and tilted her head back to glance up at him. With him standing so close, she heard Unser ask Jax what he was going to do. "One way or another, I'm going to stop him from hurting anybody I care about." The police chief then asked the vice president of the local motorcycle club what he should do. "Do what you can to drive a wedge between the two new law enforcement butt buddies."

Without saying goodbye, Jax snapped his phone closed and slipped it back into his pocket. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"According to Unser, your restraining order won't stand against a federal investigation." She moved to refute his apology – after all, nothing that was happening was Jax's fault, but, before she could, he kept talking. "This doesn't change anything, though, Tara. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

It was her turn to touch him in reassurance. Lifting her right hand to his chest, Tara wrapped her fingers tightly in his kutte. "Jax, you have no idea how much that means to me – how much the last couple of weeks with you and your son have meant to me, but I... I can't accept your help." Letting go of him, she slipped away, skirting around his much larger frame and going to stand on the opposite side of the landing. "You need to stay away from me."

"Tara, what are you...?"

"I'm not safe, Jax," she interjected, her voice rising with terror and trepidation, with desperation. "I brought this danger to you. It's my fault you're at risk right now."

He argued with her. "I am who I am, Tara. What I do... If I did anything else, it wouldn't matter that Kohn's ATF. You didn't make me Samcro, so it's not your fault that the Feds have a reason to come after me."

"But they wouldn't be here now if I had just stayed away."

"From what," he challenged, stalking towards her. "Charming or me?"

"You. Both." Her hands shook and her voice trembled with uncertainty. "I don't know."

"If you wouldn't have come here, you just would have gone somewhere else, and Kohn would have followed you there, too."

Tara smiled. The gesture was bittersweet. "But you wouldn't have been in any of those other places. And neither would have your son. If you won't stay away from me for your own sake, you need to for Abel. You're all he has, Jax; he can't lose you."

He reached for her, smoothed her hair back in repetitive, soothing strokes. "Abel's not going to lose me, and I'm not going to stay away from you, so he's not going to lose you either." She went to protest, but then he kissed her. It was a fast kiss – a hard fusing of their mouths as he tried to pour every last drop of reassurance that he could into the embrace. Pulling away from her mouth and then stepping back from her body, he said, "I have to go. If I'm any later, we won't have to worry about Kohn, because Gemma will kill me. But I'll see you later."

"Wait, Jax," she called out, but he was already gone – taking the stairs two, sometimes three at a time as he left. Even if he would have stayed, though, Tara had no idea what she would have said, how she would have been able to push him away.

Jax Teller was proving to be quite the tenacious man.

…

Tara was in a near panic.

She had no idea what was going on. She couldn't find Jax. She knew he was there. While searching for him, she went outside to the loading dock, spotting his bike parked behind the hospital, but he wasn't waiting outside for her, and he wasn't in any of their usual haunts – Abel's room and the hallways and waiting areas of the labor and delivery floor – or any of the other places she felt it made sense for him to be – the chapel, her office, the ER. There was a member of his club being treated for burns so gruesome they made even the most jaded and battle worn surgeon cringe, and Jax was MIA. He wasn't picking up his phone or answering her texts either.

As she made her way systematically through the hospital, looking for him, Tara tried not to imagine what might have caused such severe burns, and she tried even harder not to imagine Jax with similar wounds. The victim had been dropped off outside of the hospital, and his ex-wife was with him, but nobody knew anything more. The only reason she knew that the man was Samcro was because there had been whispers from the nurses and doctors who had been in Charming longer than she had – gossip questioning if trouble was brewing for the club, if there would be retaliation. In the back of her mind, Tara worried that, somehow, what had happened to the burn patient was related to Kohn, that it was her fault.

Her footsteps and searching gaze mapped the hospital's hallways. North, south, east, west, she followed the gridlines that separated the various units and wings and provided access to hundreds of rooms. But around every corner, she found nothing but more emptiness, and, in every room, she discovered more and more disappointment. As Tara went floor by floor and, still, there was no sign of Jax, her apprehension grew. By the time she finished with her first pass, she was worried that perhaps Jax had simply parked his bike outside as a cover story and that he really wasn't there. Still, she couldn't stop looking for him.

Trying the stairwell instead of the elevator – the same stairwell they had met and talked in only a few hours earlier... though it seemed hard to believe that such little time had gone by since then, she made her way from the top floor back down to the first... only, halfway there, Tara came to a stumbling stop as she found the man she was searching for, apparently, waiting for her. His arms were crossed, his feet braced apart, and there was a mask of determination wiping any other emotion from his features. Despite the walls he had up around him, Tara felt nothing but relief upon seeing him safe and sound... at least physically.

Voice soft with sincerity, she reached out for him – stretching a hand across the distance between them for him to hold. "I'm so sorry, Jax." Tara watched as he purposefully looked at her hand and then looked away, refusing to acknowledge or accept her gesture. Slowly, she allowed her arm to fall to her side, embarrassment tinting her cheeks and anxiety taking hold of her nerves. "Are you alright?" He met her concerned gaze with eyes blazing with confusion. "The man who was brought in with the severe burns, your friend..."

"That piece of shit is not my friend."

She blinked in surprise. "Oh."

"Because of him, though," Jax told her, nodding once in emphasis – his face screwed up with the acidity of intense hatred, "my _best friend_ spent five years in prison. Ope's kids don't know him. He and Donna, his wife, do nothing but fight, because they're drowning in bills, and she's afraid he's going to get pinched again if he stays with Samcro. And then this guy, this asshole, the reason why Opie's life is such a mess, has the audacity to show up there today, at the fundraiser, in his brand new truck, with his young piece of ass girlfriend – playing and laughing with his daughter, helping his son set up for his band's performance – still sporting the SOA colors tat on his back."

As her mind rapidly ran through the information she had just learned, Tara searched Jax's face for any sign of guilt or remorse. She didn't find one, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. While she could sympathize with his concern for his best friend and his dislike for the man he held responsible for his best friend's incarceration, Tara had also seen the damage done to the man on behalf of Jax's best friend. The burns weren't just punishment or vengeance; they were torture. She backed away from him until they were separated by the width of the landing and she was leaning against the opposite wall. "So, this wasn't somebody coming after you, then."

It wasn't a question, and Jax didn't treat it as such. "We gave him the chance to take care of the tattoo himself." He shook his head, negating his and the club's culpability. "He had more than five years to black it out, and he knew what the consequences would be if he didn't: knife or fire."

"Jesus christ." And Tara flinched, her lids closing as she imagined both scenarios playing out in her mind... only, when she thought about someone having their skin burned off with a blow torch or peeled away with a blade, she saw those horrors being visited upon Jax rather than the man three floors below them.

It should have scared her away – these archaic, sadistic rules that governed this brutal society – the world Jax not only lived in but ruled – that she'd never understand, but, instead, it made her want the chance to learn everything about the dichotomy of the man standing across from her. She had seen him be so tender and gentle with his son, felt him treat her just as preciously, yet he was standing before her, talking about torturing someone whom he had once considered a friend, a brother, without even a shadow of remorse. It was... fascinating, and Tara was too self-aware not to recognize that she was, in a way, attracted to those extremes Jax presented. She didn't know what kind of doctor, woman, or person it made her, but she could admit, at least to herself, that she liked Jax's willingness to kill in order to protect those he loved. It drew her to him... just as much as it scared her.

She didn't look at him again until he spoke – his words barely audible in the stillness surrounding them. "You were right." Gone was the imposing, menacing figure from just moments before, and, in his place, stood a man weighed down by burdens far heavier than she could even begin to imagine.

Tara was confused by his ambiguity; she was in denial of what she knew it meant. "About what?"

"I need to stay away from you. It's not safe."

He wasn't talking about the threat she brought to his life – about Kohn, about the ATF. Becoming angry, she challenged him, "you mean that you think you're not safe. For me."

Devoid of feeling, for he had obviously closed himself off emotionally from her, Jax added, "I'm also not good enough for you, Tara." She didn't get a chance to protest before he was already talking once again. "When I left the clubhouse tonight, I found myself coming here... to you. I didn't even think about it. It wasn't until I was turning off my bike when I looked down and realized that it's not just Abel who I keep coming to with blood on my hands but to you, too."

He shrugged, looked away from her out of the corner of his eyes. Tara watched as he licked his lips and then drug his teeth over the bottom one, nearly drawing blood he pulled against it so hard. It was then that she realized that Jax wasn't shutting his emotions down. Rather, he was just trying desperately to hold them at bay. "I can't do anything about Abel. I'm his old man, and his mother's a junkie, so I'm all he has. He's stuck with me. But you? You deserve more. You deserve someone who isn't going to get you hurt. Or worse. You deserve better."

In her pain, Tara felt rooted in place. She wanted to go to Jax, to comfort herself by comforting him, but that urge was obscured by her foreboding that, if she did try to touch him, he'd just push her away. "What I deserve is the chance to decide for myself what I need, whom I want."

He didn't say a word; he didn't respond. Instead, he nodded once, and then, for the second time that evening, Jax walked away from her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Tara was so unbelievably pissed at Jax, and that made her such a hypocrite.

All he did was throw her own behavior back in her face... only Jax's sins weren't nearly as egregious, and perhaps that's what really made her angry. Before they could truly begin... whatever it was that was between them, he told her that she needed to stay away from him, that he was too dangerous for her, that he wasn't good enough for her. For a man that could be so supremely confident, Jax also had an insecure streak, especially in regards to the things in his life that actually mattered – his worth as a man, his ability to be a father, her. The dichotomy of his character was fascinating, compelling, and, so, too, was the knowledge that he cared enough about her to push her away.

Yet, that wasn't what Tara wanted. Not really. Since the moment she had met Jax, she had been preparing herself to walk away from him, to push him away in order to keep him safe. It wasn't that she didn't feel worthy of being with him. For all of Tara's baggage, she didn't lack in confidence. Rather, she used the excuse of other people to rationalize running away from her feelings for Jax – his soon-to-be ex-wife, his pit-bull of a mother, her psychotic ex, his son, and his club. It didn't matter how or why they pushed each other away, though. When their reasons were boiled down to their simplest forms, what was left was fear. Tara was afraid of losing yet another person she cared about, so it was easier to just stay alone than risk that part of herself, and Jax was afraid to be the reason why he lost someone he cared about.

However, there was one glaring difference between how they had gone about trying to put distance between them. Tara chose denial and avoidance, lies. Jax, on the other hand, was completely upfront – had been since the beginning – about the complications that came with his life. This contrast made Tara feel uncomfortable in her own skin. Looking in the mirror, she hadn't necessarily liked the woman who had looked back at her that morning. She felt like a coward.

That wasn't a very pleasant feeling.

While Jax wasn't staying away from St. Thomas – he was still spending his nights in his son's hospital room, he also wasn't going out of his way to include her, to spend time with her. There certainly hadn't been another invitation to spend time with him outside of the hospital, no meals on the loading dock, and definitely a complete lack of physical closeness. He was cordial. They discussed Abel's case when applicable, but, in walking away from her that night, Jax had also severed any personal connection between them. He simply wouldn't engage. He also absolutely refused to touch her. It wasn't until after Tara lost his touch that she realized just how tactile of a man Jax was.

But he was also extremely self-possessed when he wanted to be, stubborn. So, in an effort to avoid touching her, their interaction – as limited as it was – had become downright stilted and awkward. Tara had no doubt that there were rumors swirling around the hospital about them – the doctor who acted unprofessionally and had a one night stand with her patient's father; the father who, afterwards, didn't want anything to do with the surgeon yet couldn't entirely avoid her because she was his son's physician. Tara wasn't sure what was worse – that her coworkers believed such things about her, or that they weren't true? While she wanted more from Jax than a one night stand, she hadn't even gotten that much from him before they both became idiots and ruined what could have been such a good thing.

Or potentially ruined. Tara wasn't quite ready to give up on Jax yet. That was the one good thing about realizing her hypocrisy; it had given her the newfound resolve to prove to Jax that they were _both _wrong. For now, maybe they couldn't be any more than friends. Kohn was still a legitimate threat, and, despite disagreeing with him, Tara wouldn't disregard Jax's own fears. At the same time, however, she was now even more convinced that they needed each other. She needed someone to trust in, and he needed someone to trust him. She needed someone to believe in, and he needed someone to believe in him. And they both needed someone to listen. To just _be _there.

As Tara's mind wandered, so, too, did her feet... as was wont their habit. Her destination she never doubted: Abel's hospital room. It didn't seem to matter what she was doing or where she was coming from, one way or another, that's where she always ended up. Her paths varied, her pace. Sometimes, Tara was direct; sometimes she rambled through the halls. As she came within sight of the NICU, she scanned her surroundings, smiling when she spotted the reason for her predictability.

Jax was there.

It was the middle of the afternoon, so Tara knew that he wouldn't stay long, that he wasn't really there to see his son. Yet, seemingly like her, he always gravitated towards Abel anyway. She liked to think it was a combination of two factors: one, with every day that went by, he became a better parent, and, two, he felt a pull towards her as well, hoped that, by always returning to the same place, they'd eventually find one another there. It was a silly, romantic whim, and it made her blush and glance away from him while she bit her bottom lip.

Jax had one foot braced against the wall, his hips thrust slightly forward to accommodate his back and ass resting against the flat surface. His hands were shoved deeply into the front pockets of his jeans. He wasn't looking at her, wasn't really looking at anything really, so he didn't notice when she approached him. Instead, he was looking at the floor, unruly hair swept forward to cover his face.

"I didn't think I'd see you today." She stopped at his side, hugging the chart she was holding against her chest. He glanced up – met her gaze for only a second before his eyes skittered away. His left foot dropped. He fidgeted. "I assumed you had a few fires to put out."

"You heard?"

"What, that Gemma popped Half-Sack's Cherry with a skateboard?" The chuckle that escaped from Tara was surprisingly genuine... given who they were discussing. While she disliked Gemma Teller-Morrow, felt that she was the type of woman that gave their entire sex a bad reputation – that one conniving, manipulative bitch of an apple that soured the entire bushel, she had to admit that the visual she imagined of the scene that had taken place on the sidewalk a few hours earlier was amusing, especially when she pictured Gemma shoving some poor, unsuspecting, pimply kid off his skateboard in order to get her hands on her latest weapon of choice. Plus, the entire hospital was abuzz with the news, jokes running rampant. Even saying what happened out loud could curl the lips of the most dour of individuals. "Yeah. Everybody's talking about it."

"That's why I stopped by," Jax admitted, standing up straight and crossing his arms over his chest. "I wanted to make sure you understood."

"Understood?" Brow furrowed, she repeated, "understood what?"

"The situation."

"Jax," she cautioned him, shaking her head in emphasis. "I really don't want to know why your mother does..."

"Clay tapped that sweet butt while he was in Nevada."

Incredulously, she could only ask, "_sweet butt_?"

His bravado disappeared, replaced with discomfort. "We call ours crow-eaters... because, well, we're Samcro."

"Classy." If there was a note of rancor to her retort, Tara felt it was justified.

"Basically, they're women who hang around the club and who are willing to do whatever or, really, whoever they're told to in the hopes that someday someone will take a shining to them and make them their old lady."

Unwilling to hold back her opinion, Tara voiced, "that's disgusting, and it's pathetic." Jax shrugged – neither disagreeing nor agreeing with her. Narrowing her gaze, Tara questioned, "why are you telling me this?"

"Because, like I said, you need to understand."

She shrugged her shoulders in dismissal. "I'm assuming your mother found out about Clay and... Cherry, and she was angry. Got a little payback. It wouldn't be the first time, I'm sure."

He took a step towards her, reached out to touch her hand, but then stopped himself, pulling away from her like his skin had been scalded. His arms dropped to his sides. "You're not getting it. What Clay did," Jax informed her, "it's accepted. Hell, it's encouraged. It's practically a rule."

"It's a rule that men in your club must cheat on their wives?"

Even as he explained, he shook his head to negate her response. "Old ladies are respected – off limits to other members, and, generally, most guys are faithful when they're at home. But when we go on runs, when our old ladies aren't with us? Yeah, it's kind of a rule."

"Well, obviously, your mother thinks this rule is as ridiculous as I do," Tara said. It was a hard pill to swallow – agreeing with Gemma about anything.

"No, my mom's pissed because the sweet butt came _here_. What happens on a run? That's shit supposed to stay out of sight, out of mind. And Cherry knew that. Her coming here was against the rules."

Raising a brow in challenge, Tara offered, "for a club with the word _Anarchy_ in its name, you guys sure have a lot of rules." Jax smirked in acknowledgement but didn't respond. "Alright, so now I know why Gemma did what she did, but that still doesn't explain why you made a special trip here in order to tell me." Jax twisted his head to the side, refused to look at her. "Oh." Tara smirked. "I get it."

His attention snapped back to her. "You do?"

"You figured, if intimidating and scaring me away didn't work, you'd try to disgust me." His silence was the only confirmation Tara needed. "Well, guess what, Jax. Nice try. But I don't buy it."

His so very blue eyes narrowed. "You think I'm lying?"

"Oh, no, I believe this happens, and I know that you've always told me the truth. I'm the one who has been dishonest, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept things from you, especially not when you were being so forthright with me."

Jax nodded, accepting her apology, though he wasn't ready to let the reason for his visit go yet. "So, then, why...?"

Tara shocked him by reaching up and cupping his jaw with her right hand. "You're not Clay, Jax. If nothing else, you've proven that much about yourself. You also have never given me a reason not to trust you."

"I'm not a good guy, Tara. Don't put me on a pedestal just because you haven't seen me fuck up yet."

She grinned sweetly, serenely, releasing her hold upon his face. "Yeah... maybe. But you break the rules all the time, Jax." Her grin turned impish as she pivoted around on the heels of her tennis shoes and walked away. "What's one more?"

Although Tara never waited for him to respond, though she didn't turn back to look at his reaction, she felt him watch her until she had rounded the corner and disappeared from his sight. There was an added bounce to her step that she couldn't hide either. Jax's intention might have been to further convince her to stay away from him, to not want him, but all he actually accomplished was to make her even more determined to stay close. He should have known better, though. Maybe she wasn't entirely upfront about her past, but she had told him about her tenacity when it came to making something of her life despite coming from nothing, about her resolution to prove everyone wrong and become a doctor, about her obstinacy. By telling Tara that she couldn't have something, shouldn't want something, that only made her want it more.

And Jax Teller was no different.

…

Losing a patient was never easy.

Many doctors found a way to detach – to stay emotionally reserved and unconnected to their patients but not Tara. In some ways, caring made what she did harder, because she couldn't say those words – _time of death_ – and then just walk away unscathed, but it also made her a better surgeon... or so she personally believed. Because she was invested, that made her every action vital. Things _mattered_ to her. And, with every loss, she valued those saved just that much more. It was Tara's opinion that, if she ever did stop caring, then it would be time to quit medicine.

After the tiny patient had flatlined on the table, Tara had dismissed most of the surgical team, keeping on those essential to help her close-up. While she could have left such a task to someone else, she liked to do it herself. Those final moments were her way of saying goodbye, of grounding herself. They helped her focus, and they helped her process the loss. It also meant that, when she finally did leave the operating room, she'd have a few moments to herself.

As she had worked, Tara had gone over the case: a baby born at 38 weeks with pulmonary atresia with intact ventricular septum. Although an extremely rare condition – in fact, Tara had only encountered PA-IVS in her text books and medical journals, they had been prepared for the surgery. There hadn't been a history of CHD in the family... nor any of the other factors believed to increase the risk of congenital heart defects, but the condition was caught by fetal echocardiography. So, there had been time to plan their attack, to educate the family, to take every precaution to make sure of a positive outcome. Only that hadn't happened. Nothing had gone wrong per say. Sometimes... those little bodies she operated on just weren't strong enough to survive surgery.

As Tara pushed out of the scrub room, her eyes were already falling shut. Removing her scrub cap, she twisted and crushed it in her right hand, creating a fist and then resting it against her forehead and nose, shielding her face. She bowed her head, gave out a shuddering sigh. She just... needed a moment – to regroup, to focus, to mourn. Losing a patient made her both angry and sad, and that combination of emotions could be crippling. They made her want to rage; they made her want to curl up in a ball and cry until she went to sleep. But the baby's family members were waiting to speak with her, and she had other patients who needed her attention, who needed her to keep it together. And she would... in a minute.

"As I speak, ATF is raiding Samcro's clubhouse."

Without otherwise reacting, Tara opened her eyes and looked up. Hale looked smug – so overly pleased with himself that it made her stomach clench in hatred and... and pity. To live such a small and meaningless life...

She remained calm. Her voice stayed level. Tara didn't give any outward sign of the turmoil heating her blood into a boil. "Do you know what I just did in there?" Using the hand still gripping her scrub cap tightly, she indicated over her shoulder towards the operating room behind her.

"You saved a life," Hale said sarcastically, dismissively – rolling his eyes to emphasize just how little he respected her and her patients. "And that's exactly what I'm trying to do by going after..."

"Except I didn't," she cut him off. Her stillness, the softness of her tone completely obliterated his bravado. "I just sewed together the chest of a beautiful, dead baby boy. He died on _my _operating table, because he simply wasn't strong enough to fight anymore. And he had so much to fight for: two loving parents who did everything right during the pregnancy, a big sister who was so eager to hold her baby brother for the first time, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. They're all sitting out in the waiting room, staying positive and believing that, in just a few minutes, I'm going to walk there with good news. But I'm not."

He went to speak – Hale opened his mouth, but Tara snapped, "I wasn't done yet." As his lips closed once more, his eyes widened in shock at the venom lacing her reprimand. Tara, however, didn't react, and she certainly didn't back down.

"But here you are – so hell bent on taking Jax down that you'd willingly, purposefully, take away the _only _good parent Abel has. Abel wasn't like the patient I lost today. He had _everything _stacked against him. The only reason he did survive was because he is a fighter. He's strong, and he's determined, and he's stubborn. And I get it. Jax isn't perfect, but he is the best chance Abel has of growing up healthy and happy."

"He's a criminal, Doctor Knowles."

"Alleged." It was only because Hale was speaking calmly, respectfully, that she allowed him to speak at all. Tara wanted to walk away, but she knew, if she did, he would just follow, and the last thing she wanted was for his vitriol to further impact the hospital – its staff, its patients, or those people there to visit their loved ones.

"He sells guns to bangers, criminals, and _terrorists_." When Tara went to protest, it was the deputy chief who prevented her from talking that time. "I won't ask you if you've seen the news, because, obviously, you've had more important things to do." Surprisingly, this wasn't said with any scorn or derision. "But a rightwing militia group held up a prison convoy, killing one cop and two innocents yesterday. We have reason to believe that the weapons they used were purchased from the Sons of Anarchy."

Tara mentally went over Hale's words, quickly filtering through them as she looked for truth, conjecture, and bias. She couldn't deny that such a situation was plausible. She knew, though she'd never say anything, that the Sons dealt in illegal weapons. Because they were illegal, they didn't exactly end up in the hands of the most upstanding of citizens. Yet... that reason the deputy chief was boasting about, where did it come from? Was it legitimate, or was it something Josh set up, planted, in order to further his own, personal agenda? Because Tara knew that the man standing in front of her wouldn't care how evidence against Samcro was acquired; he was just interested in the end results.

"You're right. I had no idea that any of this happened." With a smug, pleased grin on his face, Hale went to say something, but she kept talking over top of him. "What I do know, however, is that you're allowing your petty resentment against Jax to blind you against a sick and twisted dirty cop."

That arrogance turned to confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Your new best friend, _Agent _Kohn..."

"Wait," the cop interrupted. "How do you know about him?" He then fisted his hands on his hips and shook his head in disgust. "Unser."

"Actually, no, I told Chief Unser about Josh. It wasn't the other way around." That might have been an oversimplification of the situation, but Tara wasn't about to go into details with the clueless man standing across from her.

With narrowed eyes, he accused, "you just referred to Agent Kohn by his first name. Do you somehow know...?"

"Oh, don't play dumb," she snapped, glaring. "You know exactly what this is about. Hell, you practically threw it in my face – the restraining order, me being an expert on law enforcement harassment. _Right_?"

"So, you're telling me that Agent Kohn was the cop you took that RO out against?"

"You tell me," Tara volleyed back at him. "You're the one who looked me up after all."

Hale at least had the decency to look somewhat chagrined. "I didn't find... I didn't dig that deeply, okay?"

"No, just deep enough to assume the worst about me, to confirm what you already believed because I dared to treat Jackson Teller with the same amount of respect that I would the families of any of my other patients." Sneering in disregard, in detestation, Tara lobbed one last parting shot. "I don't have time for this. For you. I need to go speak with the family of my dead patient."

Even though she turned her back on him, the deputy chief kept talking – his voice rising with every step away she took. "Just because Kohn might be obsessed with you, that does not necessarily make him a dirty cop, and it certainly doesn't make Samcro – or Jax – innocent."

Tara wasn't an idiot or a fool; she could admit that Hale had a point... about the club. But Josh's obsession did mean that the ATF's attention towards the Sons, the raid on the clubhouse, was at least partially her fault. So, as soon as she met with the parents of her deceased patient, Tara was going to leave the hospital and head over to Teller-Morrow. She'd never been there before, but Charming wasn't very big, and a legion of ATF agents and the chaos they would create would certainly not be hard to find. It was too late for her to prevent her mess of a life from spilling onto Jax, but that didn't mean she couldn't help him clean up from it afterwards.

…

"Why the hell are these men cuffed?" To emphasize her pique, Tara slammed the driver's side door of her car as she stood and exited the vehicle.

A tall dirty-blonde with an ATF windbreaker on turned around, smile already in place. "Because they're criminals."

"You're charging them?"

The grin turned brittle. "I don't think we've been introduced." Reaching into her pocket, the female cop flashed her badge. Tara didn't recognize her which told her that she wasn't assigned to the Chicago branch. "Agent Stahl of the ATF. And you are?"

Nodding towards her own _badge_, she answered, "Doctor Tara Knowles."

Seemingly unfazed, the other woman blinked several times before nodding towards Tara's vehicle. "That's a beautiful car."

Someone else – one of Jax's fellow club members – reiterated the sentiment. "It's a very pretty cage."

"Are you sure you really want it serviced by a bunch of low-rent bikers," Agent Stahl finished.

Tara took a step forward, crossed her arms over her chest in a confrontational manner. Chin tilted at a haughty angle, she replied, "I'm not here for my car, and you haven't answered my question. Are you arresting these men?"

The female agent ticked her head to the side once. "Not yet."

"Then, if they're cooperating, you need to un-cuff them."

The other woman didn't back down, however. In fact, she laughed. "I thought you said you were a doctor, not a lawyer."

"I'm a surgeon, actually. But just because I don't have a law degree, that does not mean that I don't know my basic rights. _Their_," she nodded towards Jax and his fellow club members, "basic rights."

Stahl didn't respond for several moments. Rather, she seemed to be looking Tara up and down, appraising her. Finally, she leveled her judgement. "Cuff her, too."

"What," she immediately protested, eyes flaring in outrage. "You can't do that." When another officer just kept advancing towards her, handcuffs already out, she pressed, "I didn't do anything but call you out on ignoring their rights."

"Oh, I don't know," the agent drawled, smirked. She glanced at the other law enforcement members surrounding the parking lot of the garage. "I'd say you were impeding a federal investigation, wouldn't you, boys?"

"That's bullshit," Tara started only to be cut off.

"Tara," Jax raised his voice, spoke for the first time. Although he didn't say anything else, she could hear so much in just how he said her name. It was a warning, a plea, an acknowledgement of what she was trying to do but his way of telling her that her efforts were in vain. It was advice.

"Oh, well this is interesting," Stahl remarked, glancing back and forth from Jax to Tara, a lone eyebrow lifted in amusement, in realization. "You two know each other."

But Tara was done talking to the ATF agent. Cuffed and pushed down on the ground beside Jax and another Son with a partially shaved head and tattoos along the skin of his skull, Tara remained resolutely silent. As soon as she took a moment to put aside her frustration with the situation, she quickly came to understand what type of woman she was dealing with. Stahl was a woman in a predominantly male world – a very chauvinist world, for that matter. In order to prove that she belonged, she thought she had to be harder, cruder, more cutthroat than her male colleagues. It also meant that she'd be more willing to take advantage of and break the rules if it helped her make a name for herself. She was going to be dangerous.

Eventually, however, Stahl grew tired of waiting for Tara to say something else, and she walked away. Once she was gone, Tara turned to Jax. "Sorry. It's just..." Feeling tears fill her eyes, Tara looked away, digging her chin into the rough asphalt beneath her face to stem away the moisture. Everything was just coming to a head – Jax pushing her away, losing her patient earlier, Hale's antics, and now her confrontation with yet another less than honorable cop, but she refused to break down. It was exactly what Stahl wanted and exactly what neither she nor Jax needed. Finally finishing what she had previously started to say, Tara explained, "this is a major button for me. I take issue with people like her." _Agents like her_.

"I know, babe," Jax reassured, and the compassionate way he offered his words made Tara twist her neck around once more to meet his gaze. "I know."

She nodded and gave him a half smile in acknowledgement. For several minutes, they fell into a comfortable silence, no one wanting to say anything to bring Stahl or any of the other agents back to where they were lying on the ground. But, eventually, Tara could remain quiet no longer. "Why does it smell like shit?"

She was met with several chuckles which turned into full-belly laughs and Jax's amused, twinkling eyes. "We had a little bit of a sticky situation earlier," was what he told her in explanation. Frankly, she didn't want to know any more, especially when Jax briefly looked away from her – back towards what she assumed was the clubhouse – before concertedly trying to distract her. "So, what's with the Mustang? It's a '66, right?"

"You know my car?" She was pleasantly astonished. "I thought you were just about bikes... you know, seeing as how you're the vice president of a motorcycle club."

"Tara, everybody appreciates a classic."

She grinned her agreement. Although his friends and fellow club members were surrounding them and obviously listening to their conversation with avid curiosity, no one else spoke, and she wasn't nearly as uncomfortable with the situation as she could have been. "My dad had this old Cutlass while I was growing up. After my mom died, he barely made enough to keep a roof over our heads, but he refused to get rid of that car. After he died, everything was sold, but I guess that's the one thing I got from him – a love of classic cars. I didn't have need for a car in Chicago, but, as soon as I accepted the position here in Charming, I bought one."

"Not another Cutlass?"

"No, that was his," she said, not even realizing it until that moment why it had been so important to her _not _to buy the same kind of car as her father. "Plus, I wanted a convertible. After so many years of trudging through the Chicago winters, I can't get enough of the California sunshine."

"I like its colors."

Tara glanced at his blue and white flannel, his blue jeans, and then she rolled her eyes. "You would."

Before Jax could respond, there was a commotion from behind them. Tara didn't even get a chance to look around to find out what was happening before she felt Jax scoot over and angle his body over top of hers. For the briefest of moments, she feared that something was wrong, that they were in danger, and that Jax was trying to protect her, but then she heard a voice she'd never be able to forget miserably exclaim, "it's clean," and Tara realized exactly what Jax was doing. Maybe they weren't in physical danger, but he was still trying to protect her, trying to make sure that Kohn didn't see her there, lying beside him. She wasn't sure if it worked or if Josh was just too distracted to notice anything besides his own rage, but, when she heard someone hastily turn over an engine and then peel away from Teller-Morrow, she knew Josh was gone.

"Get those cuffs off of them," Agent Stahl ordered as she marched by, not even throwing a glance in the Sons' direction. Without waiting to see if her instructions were followed, she, too, left.

It took only moments for the pandemonium created by the ATF to disappear.

As the last cruiser pulled away, the club members started to disperse, grumbling under their breaths as they spread out to access the damage and start cleaning up from the raid. While Jax didn't say anything, he moved towards the clubhouse. He didn't ask for Tara to go with him, but he didn't tell her to leave either. So, she followed closely behind, trying not to stare too blatantly at the world being revealed to her for the first time.

The clubhouse was exactly how she had pictured it... yet more, bigger than she could have imagined, too. There was Sons of Anarchy paraphernalia everywhere. Everything was dark and masculine. A bar, a pool table, leather. A lot of leather. What really caught Tara's eye, however, was the wall of _honor_, so to speak – mugshot after mugshot in mismatching frames and lined up in what seemed like no particular order. She wanted to stop and study the pictures, but Jax didn't even pause to glance at them as they walked by, instead heading down a hallway which led further into the clubhouse.

Eventually, he came to a stop in front of a bedroom. _His _bedroom. Tara realized it must be the bunkhouse he had told her about. Tentatively, they both stepped inside of the space, careful not to further destroy anything that littered the floor. And there was plenty. The room had been absolutely trashed – nothing going unscathed. There was a bat cast aside, and she instantly recognized the destruction as being caused by the toy which had, instead, been handled like a weapon. Things had been smashed, knocked over, kicked, and ripped. There were tiny fragments of photos sprinkled about haphazardly.

This had been Kohn.

"Jax, I'm so sorry."

"This isn't your fault, Tara."

She scoffed, eyed him incredulously. "How can you say that?"

"Because it's the truth." When she went to further protest, Jax kept talking. "This isn't the first time the Feds have been after us, and this isn't the first time we've been raided. It won't be the last either."

She bent down, scooped up some of the pieces from the torn pictures. Before looking back up at him, she noticed that the photos seemed dated. There were fragments of faces – ones of soldiers, of bikers, of a little boy. "You can't tell me it's ever been this personal before, though."

Jax sighed and reached out a hand towards her, taking the picture pieces into his own palm and then moving across the room to throw them away. At first, she had believed him to be reaching out for comfort, but Tara quickly recognized the wall Jax had erected between them – the one he was using to keep her physically and emotionally distant. But she wasn't about to back down either. "Will you at least let me stay and help you clean up?"

"What about the hospital?"

"I'm done for the day." It was the truth, but it didn't exactly fit with her workaholic nature, and Tara watched as Jax's brow furrowed in incredulity. "I'll want to go back later and check on my patients" – _see Abel_, "but I have some time."

"Yeah, okay then," Jax agreed, and he nodded his acceptance of her offer as well. Jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the hallway and the main part of the clubhouse, he said, "just... let me go get some supplies."

She watched him disappear, and then Tara slowly collapsed onto the low-standing, somehow still made bed and sighed.

…

Tara had never liked paperwork. Even as a student, she much preferred labs where she could do something, fix something, make something versus just explain a situation or answer questions on a test. She liked to read, but she didn't enjoy explicating a novel afterwards. She approached her duties as a surgeon in the same way. When Tara was done with a task, she wanted to possess a feeling of accomplishment – like she had actually had an impact on a patient's life. Filling out charts left her with no such feeling. So, she often procrastinated her paperwork, putting it off until she was suddenly overburdened with charts and left with no choice but to explain rather than fix or make.

Pulling her legs up underneath her on the small couch located in Abel's NICU room, Tara tried to get comfortable. Really, though, she knew she was just further delaying the inevitable. She had a stack of charts beside her and her laptop resting on her thighs, a night's worth of paperwork awaiting. With yet another glance up at the sleeping premie before her, she made sure that Abel was resting comfortably, that the music she had softly playing to help keep herself awake and at attention – 90's grunge and alternative, the one thing from her teenage years she hadn't yet been able to part with – wasn't disturbing the little baby boy. If anything, Abel seemed to enjoy the heavy guitars and angry lyrics.

She could have watched him all evening, though, come morning, that wouldn't help her with the ever-harping hospital administrator, so Tara, for a brief moment, closed her eyes in determination – to center herself, and then she refocused upon the task at hand, opening the chart on top of the alarmingly large pile sitting to her right and getting to work. She wasn't sure if time passed by quickly or if she was just working that slowly, but, before she even had a chance to put a decent dent in the paperwork, Jax was there, and she was hastily rushing to turn off her music in order to give him the quiet he'd need in order to read to his son.

But Jax didn't seem in a hurry to sit down, and, when Tara finally took a moment to look at him, she realized that he wasn't holding his father's manuscript like he usually was at night when he visited his son. Instead, he was lingering in the doorway, watching her more than he was watching Abel. His attention made her fidget. It wasn't that Tara wasn't used to Jax's eyes following her; it was just that, over the past few days, everything had shifted between them. Their... friendship now lacked the ease that had helped them grow close in the first place. Instead, there now existed the awkwardness of unsurety – neither of them knowing quite how to act around the other, because what they wanted and what they thought the other needed were at odds.

It was Jax who broke the silence. "I would have guessed classical."

Leaning an elbow against the arm of the couch, Tara rested her cheek against her left hand which had loosely been closed into a fist. "Can't stand it – puts me to sleep."

"Not for you," he chuckled, then nodded towards his son. "But for the kid. You know, like, Baby Mozart shit."

Tara found the fact that he knew of Baby Mozart to be adorable. Grinning widely, she teased, "I think Abel prefers Baby Mazzy Star."

"Right."

But he didn't say anything else, and Tara was at a loss, because she wasn't sure what was happening between them. Jax still stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb and observing her. She could tell that there was something on his mind, yet something else weighing him down, but he was hesitant to talk to her. She didn't like it. Even when they were still strangers, Jax would talk to her. It didn't make sense, but there had always been this level of trust that had existed between them. But now...? Now, he was resorting to small talk, and, truth be told, that made Tara nervous.

Saving the file she had been working on, Tara closed her laptop, setting it aside. Sitting up straight, she folded her hands in her lap. "So, what's up?" She went for casual; she went for inviting.

"I was, uh..." Jax started only to pause, glance away, and close down even more. "I was going to see if you wanted to get out of here with me for a little while, but you're obviously busy, so don't worry about it."

Tara stood. "I'm finished, so let's go." She wasn't about to let such an opportunity pass her by. Yet, Jax obviously saw through her lie, because he turned doubtful eyes upon her, his pointed gaze falling on the mountainous stack of charts still sitting on the couch as compared to the few finished ones tossed haphazardly on the floor by her feet. "Well, done for the night," Tara clarified. Deciding that some truth would be more believable than an outright lie, she added, "I hate paperwork, so I have to do it in small doses, and, after the day I had, getting out of this place sounds really good."

For several moments, he didn't respond – simply weighed her words. Finally, Jax shook his head just once in agreement, in acquiescence. "Yeah. Okay."

"Just give me a few minutes to put all this stuff away," she asked him, already reaching down to pick up her things.

But Jax speaking again had her standing back up. "This isn't... It can't be..." His words trailed off, and she found herself filling in the missing voids. This isn't _a date_. It can't be _more_.

Without blinking, Tara met his gaze. "I know." And she did. While she didn't like it, while she hated even more that it was her own cowardice which had pushed him away in the first place, and while she now disagreed with his insistence that he wasn't good enough for her, she was willing to accept what he was willing to offer her: friendship... for now. "Stay here, spend a few minutes with Abel, and I'll be back as soon as I can."

"There's no rush," he assured her, already taking her advice and moving into the room to stand by his son's incubator. Once Tara had gathered her files and computer, she moved to leave, but his voice stopped her. "Oh, you might want to grab a coat or something, too, while you're gone."

She didn't verbally respond or even acknowledge his advice out loud, but, with her back towards him, Tara couldn't help but smile at Jax's words, because she knew what they meant: they were taking his bike. Even without being told, a part of her had known that they would. Since that first time Jax had offered to give her a lift home, she had known that he had wanted to get her on his bike with him. Truth be told, she had wanted that, too. As a surgeon, the idea of riding a motorcycle should have made her nervous. She hadn't been a doctor long, but she had already seen her fair share of trauma cases due to motorcycle accidents. But she trusted Jax, and she had to admit that she was curious about riding as well.

Five minutes later, she was back at Abel's room, curling her body into a gray leather jacket. When Jax looked up from Abel and glanced out into the hallway at her, he smirked. She knew that she looked eager, that she was just brimming with anticipation, but Tara didn't care. And she had a feeling that Jax needed the moment of lightness as well, that heavy shroud of burden he always wore weighing him down even more that night. He said something softly to his son – something she couldn't hear, and then he approached, a question already bubbling forth on his lips. "Have you ever been on a bike before?"

"Nope." Side by side, they made their way down the hallway towards the elevator. Without even having to ask, Tara knew they were heading towards the loading dock, that Jax would be parked out back rather than in the hospital's small, official lot. "Is there anything I need to do. Leaning's important, right?"

He chuckled, obviously amused by her interest and excitement. "Just follow my lead, babe."

And that's exactly what she did. For the first few minutes, Tara was hesitant... about everything really. She didn't want to hold onto Jax too tightly, and she didn't want to let go and truly enjoy the ride, unsure of how she was supposed to act or if letting loose would hinder Jax's ability to keep them safe somehow. But then they left the residential streets of Charming behind, and he was able to really stretch the machine they were riding to its full potential, and Tara couldn't hold back any longer.

She had always enjoyed the road at night – the quiet, the stillness, the feeling like you were the only person in existence, and that freedom was only magnified on the back of Jax's bike. Over the roar of the wind and the roar of his motorcycle, she couldn't hear anything, forcing Tara to just _be _in the moment. Everything else – her patients, Kohn and the ATF, the distance that now separated her from Jax, it all disappeared. And the vibrations of the bike underneath her, its tires flying over the smooth pavement of the nearly deserted highway, forced all the tension to flee her body, leaving Tara relaxed. At that point, she really sank into the ride – on occasion even going so far as to throw her arms out against the breeze... as if, in doing so, she, too, could become a part of the night. And Jax? He just kept driving, pushing them deeper into nowhere and further away from Charming.

Eventually, Tara became chilled, and the allure of wrapping herself around something solid, something real, became more powerful than the appeal of leaving everything behind. It was then that she felt her experience on the back of Jax's bike had come full circle, and she wound her arms around his torso, fairly molding her chest against his back. She felt boneless, like, without the tension of the life they had temporarily left behind, she and Jax had melted and become a piece of the bike itself. Perhaps the best part was that Jax seemed to let go some as well. When she tightened her grip around him, he released one of the handlebars long enough to tenderly squeeze her thigh – his way of showing her how pleased he was that she seemed to enjoy riding as much as he did.

Eventually – hours later, they stopped, Jax helping Tara off his bike. Her legs were wobbly... like a newborn colt's, and she knew she'd be sore the next day – her body not used to traveling in such a manner. But it was worth it. Without purpose, they wandered away from the road, going deeper into the night, into the unknown, because Tara had no idea where they were. That idea should have scared her, but it didn't. Rather, the lack of control was surprisingly refreshing. It had been so long since she had just let go. As they walked, Jax didn't hold her hand, but he stayed close – close enough that she could feel the heat of his body as he moved beside her.

It was actually Tara who stopped them, who insisted that they sit down, leaning against a large tree that faced east and overlooked a clear stretch of land that allowed a generous view of the night sky. She had a feeling that, if she wouldn't have stopped him, Jax just would have kept on walking indefinitely – whatever was chasing him out of Charming still licking at his heels so many miles away. Even after they were seated, however, Tara didn't push him to talk. She knew that he would eventually open up to her, and she wanted him to do so in his own way, when he felt ready. While she waited, she just watched the nearly full moon above them and the stars, amazed by how much bigger, how much closer everything appeared. She didn't know if it had something to do with riding or if it was just because they were in the middle of nowhere, no city lights nearby to compete with the brilliance that was nature. Tara had never been particularly interested in space; she'd never been one of those little girls who dreamed of growing up to become an astronaut, but, sitting there that evening, she could finally see the appeal. It was beautiful, and mysterious, and haunting.

"If the club doesn't come up with $200,000 in a week, we'll lose our gun connection."

Tara had been so lost in her own thoughts, in her observations, that Jax's statement caught her off guard, and her distraction left her scrambling in an attempt to piece together his mood, his feelings, because the words themselves didn't tell her much. He sounded detached, clinical, very much like a surgeon before they press scalpel to skin in order to open up their patient. While Tara knew that he often disagreed with how his step-father ran the club, she didn't know how Jax would feel about losing their main source of income without a chance to prepare other streams of revenue.

He shocked her further by not needing any prompting to reveal what he was thinking. "I want to sabotage the club's efforts to raise the money."

Tara latched onto the first question that occurred to her. "Would it be permanent?"

"Probably not," Jax admitted. He wasn't looking at her. With his legs bent before him and his forearms resting upon his knees, he stared out into the night, needing the separation to put his thoughts into words. "Clay won't let guns go that easily. He'll look for another supplier, or he'll push to fix our relationship with the Irish. Things would probably get bloody."

"So, then, how would you at least temporarily killing the deal help move the club towards the direction you want to take it?"

"It'd buy me some time," Jax answered. Apparently more comfortable with the direction their conversation had taken, he lowered his walls and turned to face her. "Give me a chance to show the guys that there are other ways, legit ways, to make money."

"Such as what?"

"Oh, god, Tara, I don't know." Sighing, Jax lifted his hands to his face, wearily rubbing his exhausted features. "Between everything that's happened with Abel, finding my dad's book, and realizing that I don't want things to always be like this, I've barely had a chance to breathe, let alone think up a plan. But Jury..." With one last tug on his facial hair, he dropped his hands into his lap. "Before we patched him over, he had a good thing going – gambling and girls."

She felt her eyes widen in disgust. Tara didn't want to judge, but she was only human. "You mean prostitution?"

Jax shrugged unapologetically. "It's Nevada." She rolled her eyes in response, and he continued. "I just need to think along those lines – figure out what people want and find a way to give it to them legally. And, if that has something to do with girls, that'll make it a whole hell of a lot easier to convince the guys."

She had no doubt. Tara also knew that, legit or not, Jax would never live a nine-to-five lifestyle. There'd always be an element of danger to him, to the club – guns or no guns, girls or no girls. She liked him the way he was; she didn't want to change him, but that didn't mean that she had to like everything he did. And she didn't. But there was something more important to consider with what he was proposing. "And what would this mean for you and Abel, for your safety? If Clay were to discover what you were up to, would he hurt you? Would he go after your son?" _Would he kill you?_ "What about the rest of the club?"

As one question after another poured from her lips, Jax nodded in recognition of her worries, showing Tara that he shared them. "If you would have asked me that when I was a kid, growing up with my old man in charge of the club, I would have laughed. Hurt a brother? Go after an innocent? That's not what Samcro's about... or, at least, we weren't; we weren't supposed to be. But somewhere along the line, that changed. Women and children are supposed to be protected, but with the way Clay's been acting..." He paused, looked up at the sky as if searching for help in understanding what the club that meant so much to him had become. "When it comes to the guns, or money, or his legacy, Clay's like a wild animal backed into a corner. He's unpredictable, savage. He wouldn't even think twice about ordering an innocent's death if it meant furthering his agenda.

"As for the other guys..." Jax snorted contemptuously. It was an ugly sound, a discouraged sound. "Other than Piney who's barely holding onto his vote and sometimes Bobby, they all follow Clay like lambs to the slaughter. No one second guesses him, and, when I do, they see me as weak – say that having my kid has messed with my head. Hell, even my best friend... I barely recognize him."

Tara stood. They had hours of riding ahead of them, and they both needed to get back to Charming – she for work, Jax for his son – whether they wanted to or not. Plus, she really didn't know how to help Jax. She was still learning about the MC life, piecing together a world that was so utterly alien to the one she knew and lived. Yet, even with feeling like she had failed him because she had no answers, Tara was aware of the fact that Jax hadn't confided in her with the hope that she'd be able to make everything clear and easy. Rather, he had just needed a sympathetic ear, someone to help him sort through his thoughts. But, now, they needed to go.

Holding her hands out to pull him up as well, Tara was pleased when Jax slid his palms against her own, when he twined their fingers together, and allowed her to help him. Although he tried to release her seconds later, she held tight, squeezing his hands reassuringly. Tilting her head back slightly to meet his gaze, she said, "I don't know what the right thing to do here is, Jax, but I trust you to know what it is. Whatever you need, however I can help you, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

And she wasn't. No more running.

In gratitude, he offered her a bittersweet, half smile, turning around and retracing their steps as they slowly made their way back towards his bike, back towards Charming, back towards reality. Together.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

The door opened, Tara looked up, and she watched as Jax quietly shut it behind him, though the sound of it latching was a gunshot in the otherwise still and silent room.

"Kohn's definitely not in Charming for Samcro."

He moved towards where she was standing behind Abel's incubator, coming to rest directly across from her, his little boy separating them. "How do you know?"

"Unser's been digging into him. Quietly. It hasn't been easy, because Stahl's basically kicked him out of his own department," Jax revealed. They were alone, but he kept his voice hushed, and Tara matched it. "But he finally got in touch with somebody, and they told him that Kohn isn't even supposed to be here. His bosses think he's in Oregon – on vacation."

Blinking rapidly as she sorted through all the information Jax had revealed, Tara eventually landed on a vague yet essential query. "What does this all mean?"

"It means he's in deep shit, babe."

She sucked in a breath, nodded. That was good news... or, at least, it should have been, but it just made Tara even more nervous. Kohn wasn't rational. In fact, he was insane. If he found out that Chief Unser had contacted his superiors, then he'd trace that back to the Sons and Jax. In their effort to get rid of him peacefully, they could very easily push him just that much further over the edge. Plus, if what Jax was telling her was true – and she had no reason to doubt either him or Unser, there was something else they needed to consider.

"There's no way that Stahl isn't aware of this, then." Mind scrambling, Tara tried to piece together what exactly this meant for them. "As soon as she got assigned to this case and found out that there was already another agent here, she'd look into his assignment. Stahl might be a bitch, but she's not an idiot. Once she realized Kohn wasn't assigned to Charming or Samcro, she'd send him packing back to Chicago... or, at least, she should have. Him being here without authorization, not to mention the restraining order, jeopardizes her investigation." Pausing and biting her lip in silent contemplation, Tara murmured softly to herself, "what the hell is she up to?"

But Jax heard her. And that was fine. She wasn't trying to keep her suspicions, her concerns, from him; she was just that puzzled. "I don't know," he answered honestly, shaking his head in denial. "But, whatever it is, it should be over, because she's got nothing on Samcro."

"For now," Tara rolled her eyes. "Give you guys five minutes, and you'll be up to your elbows in shit. Again."

He smirked at her choice of words but then changed the subject, becoming more somber once again. "Did you hear about those old bones...?"

"Doctor Knowles," there was a knock on the door following the interruption – backwards yet a common enough order reversal. One of the nurses Tara recognized from the nightshift poked her head into the room. "I'm sorry to bother you..."

"No, it's no bother." Skirting around Abel's incubator, she approached the older woman. As she walked, Tara observed the RN. Her gaze was jumping back and forth from Tara to Jax. The woman obviously knew who he was, and she was making it no secret that she was curious as to what they were discussing, about what exactly their relationship with each other was. Those hospital rumors were still going strong. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh," the other woman gasped, caught off guard by Tara's question as her intense perusal was interrupted. "I, um, I just needed you to sign off on this chart," the nurse answered, fairly shoving the paperwork into Tara's outstretched hands. With just a few flicks of her wrist, she did as requested. However, even after the RN had the chart back within her grasp, she didn't leave. In fact, she lingered. Meeting Tara's gaze, she respectfully said, "I'm sorry about that little boy you lost yesterday, Doctor Knowles. We all know you did your best. Sometimes... sometimes they're just not strong enough no matter what we do."

Tara nodded her recognition of the kindness and then waited for the woman to leave before closing the door once more. Twisting around to face Jax, she started to make her way back towards Abel. "Sorry about that. Now, where were...?"

But he cut her question off with one of his own, and her forward progress halted abruptly by the harsh tone he used. "You lost a patient yesterday?"

In her confusion, she spoke slowly – her head tilting slightly to the side, while her eyebrows lifted in inquiry. "Yeah?"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Her bafflement just continued to grow. "Why would I?"

Jax chuckled with cynicism. "That's just great, Tara." His face screwed up with too many emotions for her to decipher at once, he stalked towards the door, obviously intending to leave.

"Hey, wait," she protested, reaching out a hand and snagging his arm closest to her. Even then, he tried to pull away, so she held on tighter. Jax didn't turn around to look at her. "What the hell just happened here?"

He whirled around to face her. "Tara, we spent the entire night together last night."

"Yeah, I know. I was there. Remember."

"Do you," he snapped.

She finally recognized one of those feelings he was trying to restrain: hurt. "Jax, I don't understand..."

"Why wouldn't you tell me about the patient you lost?"

Tara searched his face, trying to find the right thing to say, but she was confused and uncertain of what was wrong, so she had no idea how to approach the situation they found themselves in. Finally, she just went with the first thing that slipped across her mind and landed upon her tongue. "Why would I?"

Jax scoffed. "That's just perfect." And he tried to jerk his arm out of her grip yet again, but, once more, she wouldn't let him.

"Would you just... _stop_?!" He wouldn't face her, but she could see him glaring out of the corner of his eye. "Talk to me, Jax."

With a burst of energy that caught her by surprise, he freed his arm, but, at least, he didn't leave. "That's just it, Tara. _I do_ talk to you. I've told you more about me and my club than I've ever told another person. But you don't tell me jack shit."

"That's not true," she argued – defensive, hurt now herself. "I tell you things." He snorted in disagreement, turning his back on her and walking towards the other side of the small NICU room. "I told you about my mom, about my dad, about why I became a doctor."

He spun around, throwing his arms up in challenge. "Yet, you wouldn't tell me about losing a patient?" With narrowed eyes, he accused her, "I know you, Tara. I know how much being a surgeon means to you, so you would be upset about a kid dying on your watch. That's something you should have talked to me about. I don't want details. Hell, I wouldn't understand them. But, when something that matters happens to you, I want to know about it. I want you to want me to know about it."

"I... It's not you, Jax," she started – unsure of what to say, quite honestly at a loss for words. She had no idea something like this would be so important to him. "It's me. I... I just..."

"Oh, don't give me the 'it's not you; it's me' speech, babe," he dismissed her attempt to explain. If Jax wasn't so upset, his attitude would have annoyed her.

Their voices had been steadily rising as they talked back and forth, so, when Tara next spoke, she made a concerted effort to lower her volume. She hoped that the contrast and abrupt shift would shock Jax into pushing aside his assumptions and really listen. "I used to talk to my mom. I told her everything – every mundane, silly thing that happened during my day. But after she died... My dad wasn't interested, and I didn't want to talk to anyone else. No one could ever be her, and it hurt too much to try.

"I was a quiet child – probably too smart for my own good... which only exacerbated the fact that I was an introvert. What all the other kids liked, I had no interest in. Hell, I read during recess, and I preferred talking to my teachers over my fellow students. I had friends, but... only because they served a purpose. I needed people to sit by at lunch, partners for group-work, and there was no way I was staying at home on the weekends if I could escape my dad for a couple of days. After he died and I moved, I closed myself off even more. High school... was just a necessary evil to escape and get out on my own. By the time I went to college, my isolation only became worse. I was too busy for friends; and then, in med school, and as an intern, and during my residency, they became my competition. I couldn't talk to them; I couldn't confide in them."

Seeing that most of the tension had melted from Jax's shoulders, Tara moved to stand before him, taking his left hand in both of hers. "So, when I say that it's my fault that I don't talk about my day, it's because I just... don't even think about doing it. It's been so long since I've had someone in my life who cared enough to ask, since I've _allowed _someone into my life who cared enough to want to know. I think I've just forgotten how to share that part of myself with someone. Even if you can't see it, though, I am trying, and, believe it or not, I'm so much more open with you than I've been with anyone since my mom."

His hand slipped from hers, and she was surprised when she felt him lift both in order to cup her face and pull her towards him. He didn't kiss her, however. Instead, with his eyes closed, Jax rested their foreheads together. "It's for completely different reasons, but that doesn't make me feel any better than when I thought you didn't want to talk to me about your life."

Tara never closed her eyes. In keeping them open, she studied Jax's face. "Please don't feel sorry for me."

"I don't pity you," he told her sincerely, his lashes fluttering open to reveal his striking blue eyes. In that moment, they were nearly gray – like a raging Lake Michigan during a late fall storm. "I wish your father was still alive so I could go beat the shit out of him; I wish that we would have met and known each other years ago."

Tara smiled, amused and pleased with both of his wishes. "You really wouldn't have liked me back then. I wasn't just a rule follower; I was a brown-noser."

Jax chuckled, stepped away from her. He obviously was still holding onto his need for physical distance between them. "What happened?"

"I finally realized that that brown stuff was shit, and I got sick and tired of having it constantly thrown in my face by the very people who made those rules that I always followed so closely." While she didn't say it, they both knew what she meant: Joshua Kohn happened. "Now," her grin returned, "to make a long story short: I'm sorry, and I promise to talk to you more, to actually tell you things. With that promise in mind..." Her expression and tone turned cheeky. "Today was a really low-key day. No surgeries; just post-op care, charts." Tara groaned. "Lots and lots of charts. But oh," she brightened up, turning and practically skipping towards Abel's incubator. Jax followed at a much more leisurely and less high spirited pace. "This little guy is very quickly becoming my star patient. I'd say give him a couple of more days, and he'll be busting loose."

"From the hospital," Jax asked – his eyes going wide with amazement and, if she wasn't mistaken, panic as well.

"No, not yet. Just the incubator," Tara clarified. "He'll still be here for a few more weeks – plenty of time for us to turn you into a diapering, feeding, and bathing expert."

He sighed, relieved. "Good."

Almost teasing him, she said, "you're missing my point, though, Jax. You'll soon be able to finally hold him for the first time."

With a wide smile, he didn't say anything in response, though he did look down in awe at his son. Several minutes went by, and Tara just enjoyed watching the two Teller boys interact... even if it was through the glass of Abel's incubator. Jax suddenly swearing snapped her from the peaceful moment. "Shit!" She glanced up only to find him already moving towards the door. As if sensing her questions, Jax explained, "earlier, I started to ask you if you'd heard about those old bones they dug up today?"

"Oh, yeah," Tara remarked, nodding in both recognition and remembrance. "There were three sets of remains, right?"

Jax paused, hand on the doorknob. "Those five minutes before the club's in trouble again? They're up." Before she could ask for more information, he added, "Apparently, Samcro's responsible, and that's why I'm here... along with Clay and Tig – to make sure that the bodies can't be identified."

"Jesus Christ, Jax."

Hesitation washed over his features. "Will you still be here later when I come back?"

Tara rolled her eyes. "If you come back," she countered. Striding across the room, she dug through some bins of basic supplies until she located what she sought. Confronting Jax once again, she held out her right hand, giving him plastic gloves. "Put these on even before you step into the morgue. If you can swipe some surgical booties and a scrub cap, put them on, too. If not, at least tie your hair back. And, whatever you do, don't get caught." If there was a touch of exasperation to her tone, it couldn't be helped.

"That's the plan, babe."

"Actually, on second thought, just let Clay and Tig handle this. You can't afford to get into any trouble right now, not when you have Abel to think about."

"Tara, I have to do this," he insisted. Before she could protest, he explained, "I don't trust them. There's something they're not telling us, and I'd rather risk getting caught tampering with evidence than be caught off guard by whatever it is Clay and Tig are hiding from the rest of the club."

She inhaled deeply, exhaled harshly, shoulders slumping. "Fine. Go."

With one last parting grin, Jax left.

…

Jax never came back.

Worried – with images of Hale bursting into the room and catching Jax mid-body snatch... or whatever it was the guys planned on doing... and then carting him off to jail, Tara tried to wait patiently, but, after nearly an hour, she couldn't sit by and do nothing. Even if it meant that Clay found out that Jax had confided in her, that seemed like the better alternative to criminal charges. However, Tara also wanted to stay as far off of Clay Morrow's radar as possible, so that meant that she was just going to make a quick sweep of the basement – see if she could spot Jax but by no means announce her own presence.

That plan went to shit, however, when she stepped into the corridor which contained the morgue and spotted Jax sitting with his back against the wall, knees bent, jaw and fists clenched so tightly she could see the joints flexing with tension. She was still yards away from him, but she could see that his body was trembling with barely restrained rage. In that moment, for the first time, Tara saw the violence Jax was capable of, that she had been warned about, that he had even confessed scared him. If anything was going to make her walk away from him, it would have been that moment – that recognition of the murderous fury that lurked beneath the surface, coursing through his veins, but, instead, it just made Tara walk towards him with that much more purpose, with that much more immediacy.

She crouched down before him, carefully resting her hands on top of his. "Jax?" He didn't react, didn't even acknowledge that she was there. So, raising her voice and putting some steel behind it, she addressed him again. "Jax!" He jerked to attention – head lifting to reveal tormented eyes and body jarring itself against the wall in his effort to escape, to pull away. She didn't allow him to and, instead, just held on tighter. "We need to leave. Now."

Without blinking, Tara drilled her gaze into his and watched as little by little he slowly returned to himself, returned to her. Jax nodded his agreement, biting his lip in what looked like a painful manner. Tara wasn't sure if he was doing so in order to keep the torrents of feeling crashing through his baby blues in check or simply because physical pain was preferable to the emotional assault he was suffering under. No matter her curiosity, however, she knew that they couldn't talk until they were alone, and, that evening, Abel's hospital room, a stairwell, or the loading dock just weren't going to cut it.

Still holding onto his hands, she helped him stand, watching in fascination as Jax scooted his legs back and underneath him so that he was crouched as well and then pushed himself upwards in one smooth, fluid movement. It wasn't until they were walking away together that Tara realized, when Jax had let go of her hands, he had slipped something inside of them. She waited, however, until they were on the elevator before she glanced down.

It was an identification tag, labeled Lowell Harland Sr.

The name meant absolutely nothing to her.

"We can just go. I always have my keys on me, and I'm done for the night. My car's in the side lot."

Jax pressed the button for the first floor. "I can't be in a cage. Not right now." Tara eyed him skeptically, concerned that he wasn't in any shape to drive, and Jax must have picked up on her anxiety, because he reassured, "it's cool, babe. The bike'll help."

She just nodded her assent.

Once they were outside and on Jax's bike, they didn't speak again until they reached their destination. Without having to voice that she didn't want to go back to the clubhouse (and she didn't think that Jax wanted or needed to be there either), Tara used her body to give Jax directions to the room she rented. They'd only been riding together once before – the previous night, in fact, but they had long since become attuned to each other physically. So, with gentle squeezes, chin nudges, and by leaning her body, they easily arrived at the inn.

It was one of those classic, Queen Anne Victorians – all angles, and windows, and impeccable detailing. A testament to Charming's past, it was one of the oldest homes in the sleepy, little town. While the owners inhabited and ran their business out of the first floor, the second and third levels were guest rooms available for rent. Most guests stayed just a day or two – three days, max, but Tara had been there for a couple of months already, and she had no ambition to find something more permanent. For now, the hospital would continue to be her home. However, that didn't mean that she wasn't grateful to have a quiet, private place to retreat to that evening with Jax.

They made their way silently up the main staircase – the back one only used by the owners, for it opened into the kitchen. Her room overlooked the backyard... which was essentially one large, fenced in garden, and Tara liked it for that added sense of privacy. To get to it, though, she had to pass by all the other rooms, though the inn appeared to be otherwise empty that night. Still, they moved quietly. It was like there was an unspoken agreement between them that they wouldn't talk until they were entirely sure they were alone.

Tara unlocked the door, advancing into the space first, while Jax followed just a step behind. He closed the door behind them, and, even though Tara wasn't looking, she heard the lock click into place. Her shoulders relaxed just that much more upon hearing the sound. "There's a mini-fridge by the desk, and you're more than welcome to open some windows or turn on the fan," Tara told him while she stripped off her jacket and tossed it without looking onto a chair. "Just make yourself comfortable," she added, leaning against a wall to pull off her boots. It wasn't until she had straightened to her full height once again and turned back around to face Jax that she realized just how close he was standing to her. If she took a deep breath, their chests would brush together.

That realization – and the way that Jax was so intently looking at her – was all it took for Tara's breathing to become elevated. Her fingers itched to lift and mold themselves against the strong wall of Jax's chest. Yet, she didn't move. She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip, watching as, instead, Jax's right arm slipped around her waist, his hand trailing up her spine until he reached her hair. And then his deft digits were pulling the band that was holding her thick locks back from her face down and off. The elastic fell from his grasp to undoubtedly land on the floor behind her. It was un-rushed, seductive – nearly hypnotizing. By the time Jax was finished, Tara felt so relaxed yet so aware and aroused that she dizzy.

And he hadn't really even touched her yet.

Her lashes were drifting closed on a shuddering sigh when, abruptly, Jax seized her hair with both hands – his long, agile fingers tunneling their way through the coffee-hued strands – and her mouth with his own. Her lips immediately flowered open underneath his, and she moaned in pleasure. Before she knew what was happening, Jax was walking her backwards until she collided against the wall, his hands cushioning her impact. Tara wasn't passive either. Bringing her hands up to his waist, she looped her index fingers into the belt loops of his jeans, wrenching him towards her so that his hips became nestled against hers.

When she had decided to bring him back to her room, Tara hadn't planned on seducing Jax... or being seduced either for that matter. But she wasn't surprised by what was happening between them. There was just too much of a connection, too much attraction for their relationship not to end up with them in bed together. Even when Tara was trying to push Jax away, this... this moment, had seemed inevitable. In fact, she was surprised they had managed to not sleep with each other for as long as they had. It didn't matter that, just hours before, Jax was still trying to keep his physical distance from her. What was happening was right. They needed to talk, and she was still worried about the state in which she had found Jax sitting outside of the morgue, but there would be time for that later.

Kissing Jax was a drugging experience. The man knew how to use his mouth, his tongue, his teeth to torture and pleasure at the same time. And, while the idea of a lazy day in bed spent doing nothing but kissing Jax appealed to her, she needed more than kissing that evening. With Jax's body pressed against her own, she knew Jax needed more, too. He seemed unwilling, however, to let go of her mouth, so she was forced to slip her hands underneath his clothes – first, exploring his torso – tracing the muscles of his abdomen, whispering the pads of her fingers against his ribs, scraping her nails across his pectorals, and then reaching around him to score and dig her touch up and down and into his back. It wasn't until she glided her hands beneath the loose waistband of his jeans, bypassing his boxers, and gripped his toned ass, squeezing, that he ripped his lips away from her own, gasping for breath.

In appreciation and self-satisfaction, Tara watched Jax methodically yet quickly strip out of his clothes, licking her lips and tasting him there. With a pleased grin on her face, she leaned further back into the wall, allowing it to hold her up – her knees suddenly feeling weak when she observed him remove several foil packets from his wallet before tossing them onto the bed. Jax contemplated her with a blistering, covetous gaze. It wasn't until he was completely naked, however, that she finally took pity on him and his impatience. Or maybe it was her own. Starting with her jeans, Tara oh-so-very slowly unsnapped her pants. Then, she lowered the zipper, inching them down her waist, over her thighs, by her knees, and then onto the floor in rhythmical increments – her hips ticking from side to side with each advance.

By the time Tara stepped out of them, Jax was already on her – his hands fisting in the sides of her shirt as he pulled it up and over her body without even waiting for Tara to lift her arms. He just assumed that she would. And she did. Somehow, someway, he managed to dip his fingers beneath the edge of her bra as well, removing it along with her shirt without even unhooking the lingerie. Tara could hear the delicate fabric pop and tear, but she was in just as much hurry to be naked with Jax, to be surrounded by Jax, to have him inside of her that she didn't care. For that matter, he could destroy every single item of clothing she owned, because Tara wasn't sure if she'd ever have need or want of them again.

When her body – completely bared to him except for the simple black panties she still wore – was revealed, Jax smirked roguishly. His gaze immediately zeroed in upon her breasts which, even without having felt his touch yet, Tara knew were aroused. Her nipples were alert – almost painfully so, and she didn't even want to think how amazing the pain would feel when Jax finally took them into his mouth. If she did, she'd probably moan out loud just in anticipation.

He surprised her by wrapping both hands around her waist and lifting her clean off the floor, Tara's legs immediately, instinctively, moving to wrap around his hips, her arms around his neck. As Jax buried his face in her neck, latching his mouth onto the sensitive skin at the hollow of her throat between her clavicle bones, Tara's head bowed backwards, the ends of her hair brushing against the small of her back and Jax's fingers. With purposeful strides, he stalked across her room, dropping her onto the bed and following her down without letting go. As her back came to rest against the mattress, Tara let her legs fall open so as to cradle Jax between her thighs. He settled against her with an insistent thrust which foretold of what would soon come to pass between them.

As his mouth traced a winding, explorative path down her neck and onto her chest, Tara did her own scrutiny with her hands. Perhaps it was because she was a surgeon, but she was a very tactile person, especially during sex. Once more, she dropped her touch to Jax's ass – this time, however, electing to kneed the muscular flesh. Then, using only the very tips of her fingers, she outlined his body from the inside out – delineating his organs, his bones, his muscles, his nerves. By the time she came to rest her hands against the back of his head, Jax finally touched his mouth to her left breast, electing to breathe against and then bite the delicate flesh underneath. In response, Tara curled her digits through his long hair and pulled as hard as she could.

Jax roared against her quivering chest – its pattern nonsensical and erratic. Tara was still lost in enjoying the knowledge that she could drive such a man to the very edge when she felt his palm slide down her belly – lower, and lower, and lower still until he cupped her very heat, molding his entire hand over her sex before gripping her panties and tearing them off of her. He was sheathed and inside her before Tara could finish mewing a very encouraging, entreating, "yes!"

Despite how Tara had found Jax earlier that night – the rage that had been pouring off of him in tumultuous waves, they didn't have angry sex. It was certainly explosive, however – months of feelings, of denying those feelings, and suppressing them coming to a head as Jax pounded his way inside of her very willing body. It was fast, yet it wasn't rushed. It was rough... but in a toe curling, hold onto the headboard, and scream until you're hoarse kind of way. It was all-consuming and heady, but somehow the strength of her orgasm still managed to surprise her.

Tara was blissfully sated and sprawled across the bed horizontally – Jax's head pillowed by her stomach, the nails of her right hand idly scratching through his facial hair – when he spoke. She had been near sleep, but Jax's words were like ice water against her dewy, heated skin. "I think there might be more to my dad's death than I've been led to believe for all these years."

"What," she said in surprise and then quickly scrambled to try and catch up with how Jax might have arrived at such a monumental conclusion. "Does this have something to do with those bones, with that name – Lowell Harland, Sr.?"

"Lowell Sr. was a piece of shit – a real fuck up who beat his wife and kid and spent every last dime he made on drugs. But he was one hell of a mechanic, especially when it came to bikes. He's the only person my old man ever trusted to work on his ride."

Because Jax had leaned into her touch while he was talking, Tara made sure that she continued to comb her fingers against his scruff when she responded. "Your father died because of injuries he sustained from a motorcycle accident, right?"

"Yeah, but..." Jax rolled over onto his stomach, resting his chin against one of Tara's hipbones, so he could look at her. "If there was one thing my dad did well, it was ride. Him wrecking his bike on a night with perfect conditions never made any sense, but I accepted it, because what other explanation could there be?"

"But now," she prompted him.

Jax shook his head slightly, the hair on his chin and cheeks tickling her sensitive skin. "About fifteen years ago – right around the time my old man died, things got pretty ugly with the Mayans. Bloody. Clay lied about those bodies. He said that all three were Mexicans, casualties of that war. But Lowell sure as shit wasn't a Mayan, and he was buried with the enemy, so it wasn't an accident his bones ended up there. The only reason Clay would have to lie about Lowell being dead all these years and buried out where he thought nobody would ever find him is if he had something to hide, if he had killed him to serve his own purpose – one that the club could never find out about."

Tara gasped in comprehension. "You think Lowell knew something about your dad's accident, and Clay killed him to cover it up."

"If it even was an accident," he countered. "With how different my dad's vision for the club was compared to how Clay runs it...? I don't know," Jax shrugged, looking lost and like he had finally found the truth all at the same time. "Would Clay have killed my old man in order to keep running guns? Three months ago, I would have beat the shit out of anyone who said as much. But now...?"

"We'll figure this out," Tara promised him. She didn't know how, but she knew that Jax needed her help. "We'll look into it."

"You don't have to..."

"Jax," she cut him off with a gentle smile, no other reprimand necessary. He nodded twice to show his acceptance, his gratitude. After a moment, she posed a question. "If we do this, though, what are you going to do if we prove Clay killed your father?"

Eyes falling shut in trepidation, he admitted, "I have no fucking idea, Tara."

In response, in comfort, she cupped his face, slid underneath him, pulled his body up so that it completely blanketed her own, and tenderly kissed him.

…

Beneath her, Jax startled. A phone was ringing – his phone was ringing, and he had come to sudden alertness. Instinctively, Jax pulled her closer – the arm curled under her neck drawling her tightly against his side. Tara didn't mind. It was early, and her room was cool. With only a sheet to cover her otherwise nude body, the heat that radiated from Jax was welcome. Plus, she liked touching him; she liked being touched by him. Even as he fumbled with his things sprawled carelessly on top of the nightstand on his side of the bed, he didn't let go of her. His hand was curled around her ribcage, their legs tangled.

Against the bright, morning sunlight, Jax squinted to read his phone's display screen. "Fucking Gemma," he cursed, tossing the cell aside once again. As it landed hard against the wooden surface, it stopped ringing. "That woman needs to get off my god damned ass." And then he yawned, bringing his other arm over to wrap around her waist. As Jax settled on his side, facing her, he buried his face in her neck. Apparently, Jax was not a morning person.

Tara, on the other hand, woke smoothly, easily. While she was still tired that morning, that was often the case. She had long since learned how to push past exhaustion and function at a high level even when she was only running on a few hours' sleep. Besides the ability to practice medicine, that was the one benefit to her years as an intern. On that particular day, however, she didn't have to be at the hospital for several more hours, and Tara would have liked nothing better than to spend as much of her morning as possible in bed with Jax. Still, though, the phone call worried her.

Perhaps she was just too well trained to always answer her cell. Between never knowing when she'd be needed for an emergency surgery and constantly concerned that one of her patients would take a turn for the worse, when she wasn't at the hospital, her phone was her life-line to the neonatal unit. While there was no love lost between Tara and Gemma, she was also well aware of the pressure and intensity, the danger that came with Jax's lifestyle, and Gemma had her finger on the pulse of Samcro. If there was a problem, it would make sense for his mom to be the one to contact him.

Because of this reason, Tara couldn't help but ask, "what if there's something wrong?"

Jax didn't look up. He didn't open his eyes, he didn't roll over once more onto his back, and he certainly made no move to retrieve his phone. Instead, if anything, he seemed to burrow just that much deeper into Tara. "Gemma's just pissed because she doesn't know where I am." Her mouth was already opening to protest further when he mumbled, "go back to sleep, babe."

And, from the sounds of it, Jax was already half way there himself. Taking his cue, she relaxed into his hold, deciding that, if Jax wasn't uneasy about Gemma's call, then why should she be? But then his cell started ringing again.

Frustrated and annoyed, Jax, in one move, flipped over and sat up, sitting on the edge of the bed as he reached for his phone. Without even having to glance this time at the caller ID, he answered, "what, mom," voice harsh with aggravation.

Although she couldn't hear Gemma's response, she could detect her own raised and ugly tone. Wanting to support Jax, Tara sat up, enveloping her body with the sheet Jax had pushed aside in his haste to sit up. Covered and not quite as chilled, she scooted across the bed until she could kneel beside him, resting a hand soothingly upon his naked back. Upon her touch, she could feel his muscles twitch in recognition before settling – some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

The conversation didn't last long... with Gemma doing most of the talking. Once it was finished, Jax flipped his phone shut and tossed it aside once more. "Jesus Christ," he swore before lifting his hands to his face and scrubbing roughly. Without even having to ask, she knew neither of them would be going back to sleep. "Someone broke into the house – trashed Abel's nursery. There are pictures up on the wall – ones of me with my little brother, and our eyes are crossed out; ones of you; ones of you with me. There's broken furniture and piss all over the carpet."

"Kohn," Tara surmised.

Jax spread his fingers wide – as if stretching them – and then curled them into tight fists several times. "It looks that way."

"I'm so sorry."

That had him turning around to face her. Bending one leg at the knee and resting it against the bed, he met her apologetic gaze intently. "Kohn's crazy. That's not your fault, Tara."

"Yeah, but he wouldn't be here if it weren't for me." She had to protest further.

"No, this is Unser's fault," Jax's lips curled into a sneer. "He should have made him leave town yesterday, but he's too much of a pussy to stand up to his own deputy and that ATF bitch. But this ends today."

Taking his hands into her own, Tara asked, "what do you mean?"

"Unser's going to grow a pair and, for once in his life, do his god damn job."

"And if he doesn't?"

Nodding his head in conviction, Jax stated, "then I'll take care of it myself. One way or another, Kohn's leaving Charming. Today."

Leaning forward in emphasis – their noses just grazing, Tara insisted, "Don't do anything that could endanger you or Abel, Jax. Please. Not for me."

After dropping a quick yet sincere kiss against her forehead, he stood up. The look of determination that stretched across his face gave Jax a harder appearance. There were lines around his eyes and mouth that weren't usually there. "Today," he reiterated before turning away, gathering his clothes, and going into her en suite bathroom.

It was a promise if she'd ever heard one.

…

Tara, along with several of her colleagues from St. Thomas and hundreds of surgeons from around the country, was in the middle of an interactive webinar with Boston Children's Hospital when Gemma burst into the room. They were reviewing and discussing a cutting-edge surgical technique. It was fascinating, and it was exactly the kind of work Tara wanted to do herself someday. Being able to use such training opportunities to network was her first step in accomplishing that goal.

Even before Gemma rudely interrupted – embarrassing St. Thomas but especially Tara because it quickly became apparent why the other woman felt she had the right to cut into a private meeting but also who she wanted to see, she could be heard causing a disturbance from the hall. The speaker, at the time, paused and then narrowed his eyes in annoyance before continuing only to cease talking entirely when, with a reverberating bang into the opposite wall, the door was opened, and Gemma swept in like something straight out of hell – all denim, and leather, and see-through lace; dark colors and an even darker mood.

Tara watched as St. Thomas' chief of staff stood, immediately launching into a chiding attack upon Gemma. He was red in the face, and his hands were fisted on the conference table before him, his body leaning over slightly to accommodate the height difference. "Mrs. Morrow, you cannot..."

"Actually," Gemma stopped him short with a snarl and a smirk. "It's Gemma _Tell_..."

But that was as far as Tara let her get. Standing as well, she warned bitingly, "Gemma, this is not the time for you to stake your MC royalty claim." Tara could have stayed quiet. She could have allowed for her boss to engage with Gemma, to call for security... because she had no doubt that's what it would have taken to get rid of the older woman, and then she still could have faced his wrath afterwards, because everyone knew that she was Abel Teller's doctor, and everyone knew that she had some kind of personal connection to Jax. No matter what, Gemma's behavior that day was going to land back at Tara's feet. She just hoped that taking a proactive stance against the older woman earned her more goodwill than remaining silent would have.

"Why, Doc, are you jealous," Gemma taunted smugly. "Or are you just too much of a stuck up bitch to own the fact that last night you spread your legs..."

"Not. Another. Word." Striding across the room, Tara felt her hands shaking, her arms trembling, and a muscle in her jaw ticking. For the first time in her life, she _really _wanted to hit someone. Despite her father becoming a drunk after her mother's death, he had never raised a hand to Tara. Until she became a doctor and started working for a major metropolitan hospital, violence had only been a part of Tara's life via books or the news. Even after she started her internship at Chicago Presbyterian, violence was just a periphery aspect of her life; it had never touched Tara personally... well, until Kohn. But now? Now, in tiny, seemingly innocuous Charming, she felt the need to injure someone rush through her veins like a sudden and intense fever.

Reaching Gemma's side, she wrapped a hand around the other woman's upper arm, squeezing painfully, as she jerked her out of the conference room. "You do not get to talk about something you know nothing about." Gemma opened her mouth to protest, to toss out some dirty, smart-ass comment, but Tara kept talking. "Or cheapen it." Quietly – and in contrast to how she was feeling, she shut the door behind them.

Whirling around to confront her, Gemma ripped her arm from Tara's grasp. Not caring that they had a very interested audience in the nursing staff which had tried to prevent Gemma's interruption, the older woman sneered, "and don't you romanticize sex with my son. You're just another piece of pussy in a long line, sweetheart."

Throwing back her shoulders and tilting her chin up, she met the gauntlet thrown down at her feet. "Yeah. We'll see about that."

Gemma smiled nastily, chuckled without humor, and then looked away for a moment only so, when she attacked Tara, she was able to take her by surprise. With a surprisingly strong hand wrapped around her neck, Tara was shoved back into the nearest wall. She could hear people scrambling around them, calling for help and telling Gemma to let go, but she refused to look away from the woman who was very quickly cutting off her air supply. "I'm done playing nice, Doc, and I'm all out of warnings." Tara lifted both of her hands to wrap around Gemma's right wrist. "You got my son hurt. Do you know what happens to people who threaten my family?" Sinking her fingers into the tender skin of the wrist and wrenching Gemma's grip away and off of her throat, Tara was able to free herself. Desperately, she took in greedy gulps of fresh air. But Gemma wasn't finished. Hands on cocked hips, she answered her own question, eyebrow raised in pointed emphasis. "They disappear, and, fifteen years later, their bones are found by Water and Power."

In that moment, Tara didn't care about the threat or that Gemma had practically confessed with playing some type of role in Lowell Harland Sr.'s death; instead, she could only focus on one thing the other woman had said. Through a burning, aching throat, she managed to wheeze out a few words. "Jax was hurt?"

Gemma scoffed. "Like you don't already know. You brought the ATF down on the club, and you brought your psycho boyfriend after my son."

Incredulous, she challenged, "do you think I wanted _any _of this? And Kohn _is not_ my boyfriend."

"Save your excuses for someone who actually cares, sweetheart, and get your two-faced, uppity ass out of my town... while you still can."

When the older women went to walk away, Tara snapped. "God damn it, Gemma," she screamed, launching herself after her. She got both hands on Gemma's upper back, shoving and causing Gemma to stumble before pivoting around, pissed. "Tell me what happened to Jax. Is he alright? Was he admitted? No one said anything. As Abel's doctor, they should have..."

"_My _son, _my _family," Gemma interjected, leaning forward in a confrontational manner until their noses were almost touching, "are none of your business."

Realizing she wasn't going to get any answers from her, Tara shook her head in disgust and walked away. Already reaching for her cell, the last thing on her mind was going back into that conference room, back to that interactive, training webinar. Once Gemma was gone, some of the other hospital personnel approached her, wanting to make sure that she was alright, wanting her to confide in them and sate their curiosity. Tara tried to be polite; she tried to either ignore their questions or respectfully brush them off. After all, she never wanted to be like Gemma. But, when Jax didn't answer his phone, and she was left thinking the worst, Tara felt her frustration with everything – with Kohn, with Hale and Agent Stahl, with Gemma, with the club – come bubbling up, and she lashed out, "just... back off," she ordered those closest to her. And they did.

Taking the momentary freedom for the chance it was, Tara ran down the hall and towards the nearest exit. She had to get out of there.

…

Jax's house was empty.

Tara wasn't exactly sure why she went there. Jax didn't actually live there. When he didn't spend his nights at the hospital, he spent them at the clubhouse, and, after their night together, he was probably more likely to go back to her room than he was to seek shelter and safety in the place he had once shared with his ex-wife, the place he would eventually raise his son. But maybe that's exactly why Tara was drawn to the little ranch house. Soon, it would be Abel's home, but, because of her, that haven had been tarnished. Tainted. She wanted to see for herself what Kohn had done to Abel's nursery.

Despite the fact that the house was fully furnished, it had an air of abandonment to it that no amount of shopping on Gemma's part would be able to erase. It had nothing to do with the unkept lawn or the stillness inside and everything to do with the fact that she couldn't sense Jax there. Even with all of the Harley memorabilia, the place was impersonal – like someone threw up a bunch of motorcycle prints because that's what they supposed the vice president of an MC would want hanging on his walls... yet Jax himself had not picked out a single thing in the whole house. The entire place was Gemma's idea of what her son should want.

Letting herself into the house via the broken back door which hadn't been fixed yet, Tara didn't spend much time looking around, because it wasn't going to tell her anything more about the man who owned it than she already knew. In fact, it might have just done the opposite. It didn't take her long to find the nursery, and, once she did, Tara nearly broke down and cried. It was the sudden rainstorm when you didn't have an umbrella and had just gotten fired, the flat tire in a bad neighborhood when all you wanted to do was escape from the worst blind date ever. She couldn't get in touch with Jax – his phone just kept going to voicemail, so she still didn't know what had happened to him or if he was okay. Tara had debated calling the garage but, knowing that was Gemma's domain, assumed she had already been made persona non grata there. Her only other option was to head to the station for information, but, if Hale and Stahl weren't aware of whatever had gone down earlier that day, Tara wasn't going to be the one to inform them.

So, she cleaned. She carefully took down the pictures and tried to preserve as many of them as possible. She righted furniture, returned baby supplies to their proper places, and folded clothes. Tara scrubbed the carpet... even though she feared the urine had soaked through to the pad and that the entire flooring should be replaced. That decision, however, was for a different day and for a different person to make. And she waited.

Tara was standing over what would soon be Abel's crib, her fingers toying with the motorcycles on his mobile, when she felt someone else enter the room behind her. Even without having to turn around, she knew that it was Jax. In relief, she closed her eyes, and, when she did so, she pictured him standing there, tiredly slumped against the doorjamb, arms folded across his chest. "You didn't have to do this, Tara," he told her softly. She knew he was referring to cleaning Abel's room.

Shrugging, she turned around, a sad smile in place. "It seemed like the right thing to do."

With his shoulder, he pushed off of the wall. Limping, he crossed towards her, and Tara's brow instantly furrowed in worry. "I stopped by the hospital, heard Gemma made an appearance."

The last thing she wanted to talk about right then, however, was his mother. "What happened?" He had blood on his jeans.

Instead of answering, Jax took a detour, heading towards the rocker. Wrapping an arm around her hips – his hand coming to rest against the roundness of her bottom, he guided Tara along with him. It was only then that she realized she was still wearing her scrubs from earlier that day. It had been hours since she left the hospital, but Tara had never once stopped to consider changing. Once Jax was seated, he surprised her by pulling Tara down upon his lap. Leaning back, Jax got comfortable, sighed.

"I found Kohn at Floyd's this morning – threw him through a plate glass window."

"Is that what happened to your leg – you got cut by a shard of glass?"

"Not exactly," Jax hedged. He had her pulled solidly up against him, her back to his chest, but Tara squirmed out of his grip, so she could turn around and confront his avoidance of her question, of her concern. Buckling under her pointed scrutiny, he admitted, "I didn't see him grab a pair of scissors, and he stabbed me with them." Tara immediately stood up. "Hey," Jax chuckled, "where do you think you're going?"

"_We're_ going to the bathroom, so I can take a look at that wound. I'm sure, given what you do, that you have a first aid kit around here somewhere."

"Under the sink," he supplied, not arguing further and following her up. As they walked out of the room and turned the corner, he teased, "but admit it, babe. You just wanted an excuse to get me to take my pants off."

"Like that's something you need talked into doing."

Jax just grinned goofily, shucking his jeans before hopping up onto the bathroom counter. For a man that had been stabbed with a pair of scissors that day by her insane, stalker of an ex, Jax was getting far too much enjoyment from the situation. Removing the first aid kit, Tara quickly assessed both the supplies she had to work with and the injury. Someone had hastily taped some gauze over top of the stab wound, but Tara had a feeling it hadn't been cleaned, and she also wanted to make sure he didn't need stitches. As she efficiently went about her task, Tara found her eyes glazing over. To stem the flow of her tears and push her belated concern away, she sunk her teeth into her bottom lip while she worked.

Several minutes later, when Jax's voice broke the stillness of the small bathroom, Tara nearly jumped. "He's gone, by the way." She glanced up, and it was Jax who reached out to carefully tuck her hair behind her ear. His touch lingered there – his fingers softly skimming over her cheek, her jaw. "I watched him leave myself."

Needing more information, she practically pleaded, "what happened?"

He nodded, acknowledging her request before starting to explain. "After I saw this place, I flipped, Tara. I called Unser, told him to find Kohn, but he already knew where he was – at Floyd's, getting a hot shave... like he didn't have a care in the world and hadn't just trashed my kid's nursery."

"So, you went there?"

"Yeah. And I... I lost it."

Rolling her eyes, Tara admitted, "that was kind of going around today."

"I heard." Raising his brows in emphasis, he told her, "we're going to talk about that, too, you know."

She quirked her mouth to the side, nodding and shrugging. "I do."

He seemed to accept that, because he returned to their previous topic. "Luckily, Unser was first on the scene, and Floyd told him that Kohn stabbed me first, that that was why I threw him through the window."

"And the leaving town part?"

"Unser arranged it. While I got the third degree from that ATF bitch, Stahl, Unser apparently realized that I was done putting up with Kohn's sick games. I don't know how Unser worked it around Hale and Stahl, but Kohn was sent back to Chicago. On charges. I followed the police cruiser that was taking him to the airport until they left Charming." Tara sighed in relief, her entire body relaxing. It was hard to believe that everything with Kohn was finally over, but she trusted Jax. If he saw Kohn leave town, then Kohn really was gone. "Now, you want to tell me about what went down between you and my mom today?"

Tara busied herself with cleaning out Jax's wound while she talked. "It was nothing. Really."

"Tara, I can see the bruises on your neck, and more than one person stopped me while I was there to ask how you were."

Moving on to bandaging, she quickly explained, "your mom barged in during this training webinar. She was pissed because you got hurt, and she was spoiling for a fight. I didn't want her to make even more of a scene in front of hundreds of doctors, so I gave her what she wanted. We left the room, went out into the hall, and, like so many times already, we fought. She told me that you were hurt, but she wouldn't tell me anything else, and she told me to leave town. Things got physical, but I grabbed her first. If my neck's bruised, her arm and wrist probably are, too."

Putting one last piece of tape in place, Tara gathered her thoughts and then stood up straight since she had been bent over Jax's leg while she worked. Meeting his gaze directly, she said, "there's something else that I have to tell you, but I don't want you going off and confronting Gemma. I can handle my own shit with your mother. I just... you need to know, and you'll realize why."

At her cryptic warning, his brow became lined with agitation. "Okay?"

"She said that, when people threaten her family, they disappear, and, fifteen years later, their bones are found by Water and Power."

Jax's face darkened – became intense, and dangerous, and hard. He reached for her, grabbing her hips and pulling her further between his legs and even closer. "Shit."

"Jax, I think your mom might have had something to do with Lowell Harland Sr.'s death."

"Which means, if I'm right about Lowell, then she was involved in my dad's death, too," he finished for her.

She could sense the turmoil coiling tightly inside of him – the need to leave and find answers, force answers with his fists, from those once closest to him. But Tara knew that, if they were going to find the truth, then they had to go about digging into the past carefully. Plus, when Jax next saw his mother, he needed to have a clear head. Too much had happened that day, and they had learned too much for him to go off and confront Gemma that night, and, selfishly, she needed him close. Despite seeing that he was alright with her own eyes, despite getting to examine and dress his wound with her own hands, Tara could still taste the panic and fear in the back of her throat. With this in mind, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around Jax's neck, sinking her fingers into his hair and dropping her face to rest against his chest, against the leather of his kutte and the cotton of his t-shirt.

Without saying a word – perhaps he sensed what she needed; maybe he needed the same thing, too, Jax slid off of the counter; took her by the hand; and led her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom that was supposed to be his, which had once been his ex-wife's, which would now, at least for that night, become theirs.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Despite the fact that Tara was the only neonatal surgeon at St. Thomas, she was still technically a resident. This meant that all of her decisions were subject to review, and she was still under the supervision of an attending. While her lone wolf status in regards to her specialty provided Tara with a sense of independence the other residents weren't privy to, it also brought its own complications and hoops. Because her attending had a different – albeit related – specialty, they worked different cases, had different schedules. His checking up on her was dependent upon when his surgeries and appointments were, not hers. Sometimes, this created conflicts, and it certainly made for some longer days for Tara. One of those days just so happened to be _that _day, the day that Abel was finally being allowed out of his incubator.

Luckily, Jax already knew about how the chain of command she operated under worked, and she had warned him earlier that morning before they had come into the hospital that they'd be at the whim of the pediatric surgery schedule. While she had hoped that Dr. Namid would be able to meet with her about Abel's case and then examine the little boy for NICU release approval right away, he had been called into an emergency surgery that was supposed to take most of the day. That meant that Abel would remain in his incubator, and Jax wouldn't be given the distraction of holding his son for the first time. Instead, he'd be left with nothing to do but stew over his suspicions regarding the club, his father's death, and his mother's involvement, and, regarding that – despite her promises to help him look into the case, there was very little Tara could do to help.

She already intended to pull John Teller's medical file, but how injuries were supposed to point towards a sabotaged bike, she wasn't sure. A motorcycle wreck was a motorcycle wreck. While there might be different injury patterns if the crash had been a suicide, that wasn't the case, and Tara didn't believe they'd be able to prove intent from the report. All they would be able to determine was how John Teller had reacted to that hypothetical intent, and that wouldn't get them any closer to proving their theories than they already were. But, still, Tara felt like it was a necessary if not futile first step.

What they really needed was the wreck's accident report, but that would require a trip to the police station and cooperating with Charming law enforcement. While the club trusted Unser, she and Jax were essentially working against the club... or at least Clay and Gemma, but their needs, thoughts, and desires had long since become the club's. There was no separation of power within Samcro. Could she and Jax trust Unser to help them without immediately informing the club of their actions? Then, there was also the threat of Hale and Stahl. They certainly did not need either one getting wind of their suspicions. Such dissension in the ranks was exactly what the deputy chief and ATF agent were seeking to create and then exploit.

So, it felt like they were stalled... even before they had gotten onto the track. If they couldn't find information by going around the Sons, Jax would want to go through them... which meant digging for information in plain sight, information that his step-father and mother were, if their suspicions were correct, willing to kill in order to protect and keep buried. There was already tension between Jax and Clay over how to run the club. Tara didn't even want to consider what would happen if either Clay or Gemma got wind of their ideas regarding John Teller's death.

It was with these thoughts, these fears, running rampant through Tara's mind that she approached Abel's NICU room only to find Jax already fighting with his mother. While she didn't interrupt or make her presence known, she also didn't do anything to prevent the pair from noticing that she was there. Quietly entering the room, Tara shut the door behind her, hoping to curtail other hospital employees from eavesdropping on the private conversation... or, more accurately, argument.

"Have you even been to the clubhouse in the last few days, Jackson?"

Already sounding exhausted with his mother's vitriol, Jax cooly replied, "I've been a little busy."

"Yeah," Gemma scoffed – sounding disgusted, sounding disappointed – and rolled her eyes. "Getting busy."

"Don't start."

"Or what," his mother questioned Jax's warning. "Will you cut me out of your life as well?"

Folding his arms over his chest, Jax sighed. "Quit being so melodramatic. I haven't cut anybody out of anything."

"Oh, so you're helping the club come up with the $200,000 they owe the Irish then, huh? You have some plan to come up with the money? You haven't abandoned your brothers and forgotten what that VP patch on your chest means?"

"I haven't forgotten anything, but maybe you have," Jax cautioned. He moved to stand in front of his son's incubator... as if shielding Abel from his grandmother, making Gemma back up several steps until she could move behind and place the rocker between them. In changing positions, Jax finally noticed Tara standing in the room. He didn't formally address her, nor did he really acknowledge her, but she saw the warmth of recognition and welcome flash briefly across his otherwise cold and hard features before resettling upon his mother. "That VP patch means that I have a say in the club, that it's my job to counsel and steer us in the right direction, especially when Clay's leading us into trouble, and that you, as just an old lady, do not."

"Yeah, well, I'm just wondering whose voice you're talking with – your own or that doctor bitch's."

"I wouldn't go there if I were you."

"Why not," Gemma challenged. Although Tara couldn't see her face, she could easily hear the venom spewing from the other woman's lips. "Because somebody has to, Jackson; somebody needs to remind you about your place, about where your loyalty lies, and that's with Clay, with the club, with your family." His mother's voice became downright sinister. "And certainly not with some outsider pussy."

"Tara. Isn't. Pussy." The words might have been for Gemma's benefit, but the sentiment behind them were for her as well, and, to express that, Jax briefly flicked his gaze up to lock onto Tara's. She gave him a soft, understanding smile, and he seemed to be reassured by the small gesture, because Tara could see tautness slip away from his eyes, from his shoulders.

"I see," Gemma snapped tightly, recapturing their attention. "And what exactly is she, then, Jackson, because she's certainly not one of us."

"No, she's not one of _you_," he agreed with his mother. "And that's one of the things I like best about her." Gemma gasped, flinched as if she had been struck. "She doesn't try to manipulate me; she doesn't try to control me. Tara doesn't go around, threatening people I care about, because she's too insecure to handle the idea that she isn't the only woman in my life anymore." Jax leaned in closer, separating the distance the rocker provided between them. Lowering his voice to a menacing whisper, he continued, "want to tell me what you meant when you told Tara that, when people threaten your family, they disappear... only for their bones to be found by Water and Power fifteen years later?"

Gemma didn't even hesitate, didn't even pause before she claimed, "she's spinning my words around, and she's twisting you up into knots. That bitch is lying to you, Jax."

Deciding that she had remained quiet long enough, passive long enough, Tara stepped forward. She walked around Gemma, drawing the other woman's surprised gaze, and then moved to stand beside Jax. He watched her, too, but he looked upon her with gratitude and pride, and he grinned when Tara approached. Although she felt Jax reach down and wrap her right hand in his left, she never took her eyes off of the woman standing before her. "Am I really, Gemma?"

Undeterred, Gemma ignored Tara's challenge. Addressing her son, Gemma asked, "how long has she been in here?"

He didn't give her a straight answer. "What does it matter?"

"You better not be telling her shit about club business," his mom warned.

"What Tara and I talk about is none of your concern."

Laughing in scorn, tossing her hands up in defeat, and shaking her head in outrage, the other woman remarked, "that's just great, Jackson. She opens her legs, and you what? Open your god damned mouth and tell her everything about the club? You don't know anything about this gash, yet you're putting her above your club, your family, and your son. Don't forget that that pussy has been ATF tainted. Hell, she's probably still screwing the Fed behind your back while she whispers Samcro nothings in his ear."

"Are you finished?" Tara was impressed by how Jax was able to hold onto his control. When Gemma dismissively shrugged, he said, "because I think it'd be best if you weren't here when I hold my son for the first time."

Gemma reared back, obviously shocked. "You have to be kidding me? I'm his god damned grandmother!"

"Then start acting like it." Jax marched across the room and thew open the door, making his intentions abundantly clear. Gemma did as she was silently ordered. As she stepped across the threshold, however, Jax stopped her with one last, parting caution. "And you're the one who doesn't know anything about Tara, her past, or her relationship with me and my son, so you'd better stop flapping your god damned mouth about shit you'll never understand."

Gemma looked at him from head to toe with obvious contempt. "I don't even recognize you."

"And that's okay."

With one last parting glare in Tara's direction, the other woman left. Tara waited until the last echos of Gemma's heels stomping down the hallway faded into obscurity before approaching Jax. She shut the door once more, faced him with her shoulder and hip propped against the wall, and smirked. "What happened to letting me handle Gemma on my own terms?"

Shaking his head in argument, Jax countered, "babe, I couldn't let her get away with what she said to you." When she went to protest, he continued, "and it has nothing to do with me not believing that you can handle your own problems or my mother. It's just..." He straightened, rolled his shoulders back, and took several steps closer to her so that he could touch her. His left hand wrapped around to cup her ass, while his right hand loosely gripped her chin and tilted it up. Voice just a deep, intimate murmur, Jax told her, "I protect what's mine."

Tara rolled her eyes indulgently yet pushed off from the wall to stand up on her tiptoes and quickly kiss Jax in response. Then, she smiled. "Dr. Namid has surgery all day. I'll let you know when he's done. Go do... whatever it is you need to do, and I'll start working on gathering up the paperwork we discussed."

"We have less than twelve hours before the money's due, and there's no way Clay can come up with that much cash by then. But you're right. I still need to go; I need to do some damage control with the other guys, keep working on bringing them around to my side." After returning her grin and her kiss, though his wasn't nearly as quick, Jax blindly reached behind him to open the door and backed out of the room. "I'll see you later."

Once he was gone, Tara approached Abel's incubator. Spreading her hand over the top of the glass, she looked down at the sleeping baby. It always amazed her what children were capable of sleeping through. "Looks like it's just you and me again, kid."

At least, for one more day...

…

Tara paused in the doorway, chuckled to herself.

Jax was pacing, his tread heavy against the tile floor. He'd prowl to one side of the small hospital room only to pause, tightly grip the edge of something, and lean over it before repeating the same process again, moving to the opposite side of the room, a different piece of furniture or equipment. She could hear his elevated breathing – not from exertion but from emotion. His anxiety was palpable.

Wanting to tease him, wanting to lighten the mood, and knowing that Abel would be able to sense his father's agitation, Tara queried, "have you ever even held a baby before?"

"What," Jax spun around, obviously caught off guard by not only her question but also her appearance... which was strange, because he was almost always aware of his surroundings, and it wasn't like Tara had tried to mask her approach.

Brow furrowing in confusion and unease towards his reaction, she explained, "it's just, Abel will know that you're nervous, and it'll make him..." Her words trailed off when she finally, really studied his face. Jax's nostrils were flaring, his jaw ticking, his eyes pinched with unleashed rage. "And you're not nervous; you're pissed off."

"They came up with the money. I don't know how, but they did."

Tara shrugged; her face winced in sympathy. She wasn't dismissing his anger, but she also didn't think it was worth ruining the very important moment Jax was about to experience: holding his son for the first time. "You tried your best. That's all you can do."

"My best wasn't good enough."

"This time, maybe," she added a caveat. "But it was also you against the entire club. Even the odds a little bit, give yourself a better chance, and we'll see what happens then."

In recognition of her words, of her faith, Jax nodded slightly several times before pivoting away. He didn't turn his back on her but stood so that she and Abel were to his side. Tara watched as he centered himself. His eyes closed, and he steepled his fingers together, bringing his hands up to hover over his mouth and nose, exhaling deeply. When the ringing of his cell suddenly broke the silence, Jax scowled, briefly glancing at the device before ignoring the call. Moments later, a calm Jax faced her once again, smirking. "To answer your earlier question, yes, I've held a baby before." He sounded incredulous – like he couldn't believe she was asking him that.

"Obligatory sessions of holding your little brother when you were a kid do not count, Jax."

He took a step towards her, his smirk growing into a full smile. "Good. Because I didn't particularly like Thomas when I was a kid. He cried a lot, and, then, when we got older, he took my toys _and _my mother away from me."

"You have no idea how much better I now understand you and your relationship with Gemma now."

Raising his brows and leveling Tara with an unimpressed look, Jax stated, "I told you that Opie has two kids, remember? While they were still babies, whenever Donna would leave him alone with them, I'd somehow always get roped into helping. So, yeah. I know the basics."

Nodding towards the rocker, Tara silently told Jax to sit down. He complied, immediately arranging his body so that he was ready for her to place his son in his arms. "You and your best friend with two little kids? Just who exactly was in charge?"

"They were," he answered. "And it was a disaster." Despite his words, the nostalgic grin on Jax's face told her that he remembered those babysitting efforts with fondness.

The affection warming his features dimmed slightly when his phone rang again, but, as soon as she went to hand him Abel, his wistful expression returned only to morph into one of awe, his buzzing mobile forgotten. As Jax silently held his son, looking down upon him with wonder and joy, with tenderness, Tara took a moment to watch the pair together. So much had happened since Abel's birth, that little boy had overcome so many obstacles, yet, at the same time, Tara couldn't believe that they were already at this stage – that Abel was out of his incubator, and starting on formula, and getting ready to transition into the nursery versus the NICU. In a few short days – a week, perhaps, he'd be ready to go home.

That was a bittersweet – which also made it a very selfish – realization for Tara.

So much of what she had built her life in Charming on revolved around her tiny, special patient. The only reason why she knew Jax was because Abel was his son, and she was Abel's doctor. Otherwise, there was a very good chance they never would have met. Furthermore, it was because of her relationship with the Teller boys that she was even still in Charming. Without them, at the first sign of Kohn, she would have taken off again, continued to run. If Abel was no longer in her care, how likely was it that she and Jax would continue to see each other, that she would continue to be a part of Abel's life?

While they had connected on a level that far surpassed that which her role as Abel's surgeon would suggest, that role was also the catalyst for everything else. Once Abel was released, Jax would be expected to go back full-time with the club, and she'd still be at the hospital. But her sadness over Abel leaving wasn't just about Tara's concerns towards... whatever she and Jax were to each other; it was also about losing Abel. He was important to her. Despite knowing better, she had become emotionally attached to her young fighter of a patient. Tara was unbelievably grateful that Abel had survived, that he was flourishing, but it wasn't going to be easy to let go and say goodbye either.

Deciding that she had been staring at Jax and Abel long enough, Tara turned to leave, electing to give the father-son pair some privacy. She wasn't two steps away, though, before she felt a tug on the waistband of her scrub bottoms – Jax's hand, apparently, slipping through the back slit of her lap coat, one of his fingers crooking over the edge of her pants and pulling her back towards him. "Where do you think you're going?"

Looking over her shoulder, Tara pointed towards the hallway. "I was going to..."

"Leave?"

"Well, not forever." Not amused, Jax tilted his head to the side, observed her closely. "I just, I thought it'd be a good idea to let you two bond alone. Together." Tara gritted her teeth and closed her eyes briefly as she regrouped. "Without me."

Instead of responding, Jax simply tugged once again on her scrubs – harder, the second time. The move caught her off guard and made Tara stumble slightly, losing her balance. She watched as, so smooth it looked like he had been a father for years, Jax shifted Abel so that he could hold him in the crook of his left arm, while, with his right, he guided her down to land upon his lap. Stunned, she just stared at him.

"I get it."

"Get what," Tara demanded to know.

"What you're doing?" She really hoped he didn't. "But don't worry. We'll work on that, too."

She was almost afraid to ask. "Work on what?"

"Making you realize when you're wanted," Jax answered, suddenly solemn. His honest, beautiful, insightful answer made Tara quirk her mouth and look out of the corner of her eyes as she tried to fight back her tears. "Don't worry, though," he reassured her, using that free arm to bring her even closer against him. "Abel and I are up for the challenge." There was a smart reply upon her lips, but Tara was cut off when Jax's phone sounded for the third time that evening. Nodding towards the left, interior pocket of his kutte, he asked of her, "would you mind grabbing that and turning it off?"

She obliged the first part of his request but couldn't help but glance at the caller ID screen. "Are you sure? It's..."

Jax cut her off before she could even tell him who was calling. "Positive, babe."

Needing no further encouragement, she powered down the cell, returned it to his pocket, and then settled back down against Jax's right side – the two of them perfectly content to just sit there with each other, watching his miracle of a son.

…

As soon as they stepped outside, Tara watched as Jax readied a cigarette. Yet, at the same time, he never once let go of her. With his left arm wrapped low and snug around her hips, they walked towards his bike which was, as seemingly always, parked in the back lot, while his right hand brought the box of smokes to his mouth, his lips removed one, and then he returned the box, grabbed his lighter, and lit the cigarette in a practiced matter of seconds. Tara watched, nearly fascinated, as Jax took a long, deep drag.

She had never dated a smoker before. In fact, she found it odd that Jax's habit didn't bother her – not because she was a doctor and not because she knew just how unhealthy smoking was for those who did it and for those around them but because she wasn't used to it – to the smell, to the heaviness that permeated the air when someone smoked inside, to the taste when she kissed him. Then again, Jax didn't smoke all that much around her. True, it was banned from inside of the hospital, but she had spent two nights with him, and he'd never once lit up while they were in bed together.

In a way, with Jax, she wondered if smoking was less about an addiction to nicotine and more about routine and exposure. From that very first day she had met the Sons of Anarchy – the day Abel was born and all of Samcro had crowded into St. Thomas' small maternity waiting room, Tara had gathered that most, if not all, of the club's members smoked. The scent of cigarettes, of cigars, of tobacco and weed lingered upon their kuttes, in their hair, trailing after them wherever they went. Jax had grown up inside of the club, been raised by it, so it stood to reason that smoking had always been a part of his life. In a society with fewer smokers every year, smoking was yet another dying trend that Samcro seemed to hold onto as tightly as it could with both talons. Was it more of an anthropological tradition than an actual desire for cigarettes? Tara wondered if Jax even really liked smoking.

"Where the hell have you been?"

She had been so caught up in her own thoughts that Tara jumped at the sudden and unwanted voice's intrusion... which was not a good sign. Kohn might have been gone from Charming and her life, but, now that she was – what? Dating? Seeing? If nothing else, Tara knew that she and Jax were sleeping together. So, now that she was sleeping with Jax, she needed to remain vigilant. With the dangers his lifestyle (and his mother) entailed, Tara couldn't afford to become too comfortable or complacent.

Jax, on the other hand, didn't seemed startled at all to find his mother leaning against his bike – black leather encased arms folded over her chest; her black Cadillac coupe parked nearby; her black mood, ready to be unleashed, hovering over all of them. When Tara jumped, pulling away from Jax slightly, he just yanked her in that much closer, that much tighter against him. "You know where I've been."

"I've been calling you for hours."

Jax shrugged, took one last draw off his cigarette before flicking it away, his gaze as indifferent as his actions, his tone. "I turned my phone off."

Gemma stood up straight and advanced towards them, the heels of her boots clicking against the asphalt of the parking lot. "Yeah," she remarked sarcastically, lifting her brows in emphasis. "I figured that out when it started going straight to voicemail. You want to tell me what that shit was all about?"

"I'd think that would be obvious." Before his mother could respond, Jax expanded, "I was holding my son for the first time. I didn't really feel like having the same fight with you yet again."

"Yeah, well, _father of the year_..."

"Don't go there, Gemma," Tara warned, speaking up for the first time. She didn't care about the club; she didn't care if Gemma dragged her son over the coals for not living up to the Samcro ideals, but she wasn't going to stand for her putting down and demeaning Jax's attempts to be a good dad.

The other woman ignored her, however – didn't even spare her a glower. " ... while you were pretending you're someone you're not so you can keep getting in the good doctor's scrubs, Clay – your son's _grandfather_ – almost died."

"My son's grandfather is dead," Jax contradicted her combatively. His chin was thrust forward at an aggressive, truculent angle. "And, since you're here and not lining up your next husband, I'm assuming Clay's fine."

Gemma slapped him. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me," Jax parroted, eyes going wide with disbelief. "What's wrong with _you_? My son was born ten weeks premature to a junkie mother. He had a hole in his gut and a busted heart. By all rights, he should have died. But he didn't. Instead, he has spent the last two months of his life in a glass box, and tonight, for the first time, I was able to hold him. Excuse the fuck out of me if I wanted to take just one god damn night away from all of the club's shit, from Clay's beck and call, to be with my kid."

Fisting her hands on her hips, Gemma nodded towards her son's chest. "That patch you seem to care so little about means that the club always comes first, no matter what."

Suddenly, Jax calmed down once again. "That might have been how you parented, but I plan on being different."

His mother sneered. "You mean better."

"I hope so."

Gemma just shook her head in disgust, but she also seemed to back down, because she took several steps away from them and regrouped before saying, "they were shot at while at the meet with the Irish. The mick got hit twice in the ass."

"McKeavey?"

"No, McKeavey's dead. It's some new one."

"Jesus Christ." Jax lifted his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, his eyes closing momentarily in frustration. Tara was amazed that he was still holding onto her, and she was shocked that Gemma was being so frank in front of her. "What the hell do you want from me?"

The other woman smirked. "Actually, I'm not here for you; I'm here for the doc, but, seeing as how you're practically attached to her god damned pussy..."

Tara groaned, and Jax cautioned, "don't start."

But Gemma ignored them. "I wanted you to tell her to grab some supplies and head on over to the clubhouse. When you didn't pick up, I came over here myself."

"No."

Tara was taken aback by the conviction in Jax's tone, by the heat. Although she could turn Gemma down herself, she was curious to see where the discussion would lead if mother and son were to continue it without her interruption, so she remained quiet.

"You've never been one to share." Scoffing, Gemma added, "would you relax? No one's going to touch a hair on little Miss Pollyanna's head. We just need her to dig out a couple of slugs from a now very drunk Paddyman's ass."

"I. Said. No." Each word was gritted out through his clenched jaw.

"Why not?"

"Tara's a _surgeon_, mom. I won't ask her to put her career at risk to help the club. If she got caught, she could lose her license. Or worse."

His mother stalked forward. "You're serious about this bitch." It wasn't a question, and Tara felt her eyes go wide – both because Gemma was acknowledging that what she had with Jax might be more than just sex and because Jax wasn't denying the charge. "You want her as your old lady. Then act like it. Don't ask; _tell _her what to do."

Quietly – still not rising to Gemma's bait, Jax said, "I'm never going to treat Tara – or any other woman – the way Clay treats you. And this has nothing to do with Tara's status in my life. It's about me keeping her safe. Protecting her."

"You're supposed to protect the club. The club always comes first."

Jax shrugged, his head shaking slowly to negate Gemma's statement. "Things change."

Seemingly grasping the fact that Jax wasn't going to back down and giving up on Tara going to the clubhouse to operate on Samcro's injured associate, the other woman asked, "can she at least get us some supplies?"

"St. Thomas inventories," Tara answered for herself. "Even if I was inclined to help, there's no way I could get the things this man would need without running the risk of the hospital finding out, and, if I got caught stealing supplies from the hospital, once again, I could lose my license. I'd definitely be fired." Gemma went to say something, to argue, but Tara kept talking. "Besides, it sounds like this man needs to be admitted. If one of those bullets nicked an artery, he could bleed out."

Gemma just ignored Tara, turning back towards her son, sneering. "Even your little outsider piece of ass cares more than you do."

Jax shook his head, incredulous. "You don't get it. I love my club, I love its ideals, and I love my brothers, but I hate that those things are being forgotten about and destroyed by Clay's need to run guns."

Tired and frustrated, Gemma pointed out, "that's what the Sons have always done, Jackson."

"But would you look at what it's doing to us. Hell," he ran his free and agitated hand through his long, unruly hair. "Just look at tonight alone. McKeavey's dead, your husband nearly died, and another man was shot twice. And for what? As you said, we've run guns for years, but we all still live month to month, shipment to shipment. There are better ways to earn money, mom – legit ways."

"Your father would be ashamed of you."

Tara gasped – disgusted with the woman, with the mother, standing across from her and hurt on Jax's behalf. But Jax himself? He didn't seemed fazed by what his mom had said to him. "Would he," Jax challenged with a taunting lift of his brows. "Would he really?"

"Your father built this club from nothing for you. It's his legacy, and you're spitting in its face."

"Except we both know that what Samcro is today is not what my father intended for it to be, don't we, Gemma?"

Tara was astonished when she saw genuine fear ripple across Gemma's otherwise hard features, but, as quick as the moment of vulnerability appeared, it left, and she was forced to consider if she had imagined it. But just for a moment. Because Tara knew herself, and she was quickly getting to know who Gemma Teller-Morrow was, and the other woman was too strong and too bullish to ever feign weakness. No, her anxiety had been real... which told Tara that Jax was right. Gemma did know about John's true plans for the Sons of Anarchy, she knew that guns were not a part of the original Samcro equation, and her insistence that they were was further evidence to support Jax's suspicions that his father was murdered, not just killed.

As Gemma's car peeled out of the back lot, Tara snapped out of her thoughts and tugged Jax towards his bike. They had agreed even before they stepped outside that they'd head to his place together that evening, that Jax would just drop her back off at work the next morning and she'd leave her car at the hospital. But now Tara knew their plans needed to be changed. "Your mother doesn't know about my room, so let's head there instead."

Handing her his helmet, Jax silently agreed.

…

She wasn't awake.

She wasn't awake, she wasn't stuck in her own fear, she wasn't trying to desperately ignore the sensation of being watched. Jax was beside her, sleeping soundly. Between the two of them, if anyone had a reason to toss and turn restlessly, it was him, but Jax's breathing was even, and the arm he had draped loosely around her was heavy with slumber. Abel was safe, growing stronger with every day, and Tara was finally free. After months of looking over her shoulder, Kohn was gone. He couldn't hurt her anymore, yet, despite knowing this, Tara couldn't relax. It was like her body was reacting from memory alone. So, despite how exhausted she was, Tara also felt vulnerable and exposed. At risk. She wasn't sure how much longer the feeling would last... or how much longer she could handle feeling that way.

Refocusing on falling asleep, she tried to push down everything but the comfort of having Jax beside her. Burying her head deeper into the pillow beneath her head, Tara closed her eyes, angling her face towards Jax's. She could feel his breath upon her skin – hot, and moist, and reassuring in its regularity. She narrowed her attention down to the point on her body where his wrist touched her bare skin. She zeroed in on his heartbeat – counting it, matching her own heart's rhythm to that of the man beside her. She sighed, recognizing the peace she brought to Jax. Distantly, Tara could detect slight noises coming from around her, but the house was old, and she was slowly getting used to its moaning as it settled, and Charming, though a small town, still seemed to have a buzz about it at night – an energy. Tara often found herself wondering how much of that was because of Jax and the Sons.

A sudden coolness sliding along Tara's jawline made her eyes snap open, made her head twist in confrontation, made her body tense as it prepared to fight, prepared to flee. It took several seconds for Tara's vision to adjust to the darkness, but, once it did, she cursed herself for ignoring her instincts. And then she started to panic.

"Ssh, ssh, ssh," she was warned, the muzzle of a handgun pressed against her lips – the chilled metal reminiscent of the touch she had just felt upon her face. "We wouldn't want to wake Mr. Cro."

The blood in her veins turned to ice; the heaviness of dread settled low in her gut and in her throat. "What... what are you doing here?" Jax watched him leave. He was escorted out of Charming by law enforcement. The only way Kohn could be back was if he had escaped or...

Tara's thoughts were terminated when Josh fervently whispered, "I finally realized what you're doing. I understand everything, and I wanted you to know that I forgive you. That I'm not mad anymore." Throughout everything he said, he never blinked, never looked away. He just continued to stare at her – eyes wide with the madness of his conviction and justification. "Everything just happened so fast between us."

"Fast," Tara repeated. She said it like an agreement; she meant it as a question. She needed to think. She needed to figure a way out of this, and the only way she could buy herself the time to do both was to keep Josh talking.

"We only went on a few dates before we fell in love," Kohn explained their relationship... or, at least, the way he saw it. "I was ready for that. From the moment I saw you, I knew that I could love you. That I would love you. But I also know that I was more prepared for forever than you were – older, more experienced, ready to settle down. And then the intensity of my feelings for you, how we felt for each other, they scared you, too. I get that now."

"I was scared," Tara admitted. Actually, she had been more than scared; she had been petrified. Almost immediately, she had recognized a sense of desperation in his actions. They had gone on a few casual dates: dinner, drinks – dates where they could be surrounded by other people. She wasn't an idiot. Tara took precautions to keep herself safe. But she had been lonely, and her life as a surgical resident at one of the largest hospitals in the country had been stressful. One night, when she had been particularly wound up, she had naively let her guard down and slept with Josh. Tara went into the night with the intention of losing his number the next day; Kohn had ended the night talking about their future together. She had immediately realized her mistake, but, at that point, it had been too late. She tried to avoid him, but that didn't work. Then, once he found out about the unplanned and quickly terminated pregnancy, things just spiraled out of control to the point of physical violence, threats, and Tara trying first a restraining order and then leaving town to escape his obsession.

"And so you ran," he picked up his narrative, nodding in confidence, in assurance. "You were so afraid of how you felt. You'd never experienced that before, and you weren't sure if it was real. If it could last. If you were ready for forever. That's why you got rid of our baby, our son."

His sudden certainty that their child, had she not terminated the pregnancy, would have been a boy made Tara feel even more on edge, especially in light of Kohn's actions against Jax, towards Abel. Perhaps it was foolish, but she couldn't allow him to believe such a fantasy. "It was never a baby. It was never a son _or _a daughter. I wasn't even six weeks when I..."

"When you what," Josh interrupted her, the volume of his voice quickly rising. He seemed to forget about his own directive not to wake Jax, and she could feel the man sleeping beside her start to stir... just as she could feel the cold metal of a handgun burn through the cotton of her sheets, scalding her chest. "When you killed my son and then gave life to another man's – some _biker thug's_ – child?" Jax mumbled, tried to pull her closer against him, but Kohn, who was seated on the edge of the bed to her left, grabbed hold of Tara's arm and wrenched her away from Jax.

Keeping her away from Jax seemed to calm Josh some as he once more started talking. "But I know now that you regret your decision to kill our little boy. That's why you took out the restraining order. It was your guilt and grief over our loss that made you push me away, and then even after I followed you here to prove to you how much I loved you, that we belong together, you still weren't ready; you were still scared. So, you had one last fling, one last affair to prove to yourself that we belong together. But you realize that now, don't you? That's why I'm ready to forgive you – for killing our son; for your indiscretions; for your poor, drunk, white trash background... like Mr. Cro's. That, more than anything else, should prove to you how much I love you – that I am willing to be with you anyway, despite your mistakes, the embarrassment, how much you've hurt my career."

In his restless sleep, Jax reached for her once again, and Kohn, in his agitation, reacted by slamming the butt of his gun down across Jax's knuckles. Jax immediately howled in pain, his eyes snapping open when he instantly became awake and aware. After just a second of taking in their situation, he moved to pull Tara behind him, but Josh had already redirected the gun back to her chest. Jax must have realized any move towards her could set the other man off, so, instead, he dove for the opposite side of the bed, for his pile of haphazardly dropped clothes.

He was still rifling through them when Kohn tsked, mockingly scolding Jax. "Looking for this, Mr. Cro," he taunted, pulling a second gun – Jax's gun – from the back of his pants. Jax immediately came and sat down once more upon the bed. He was naked and unconcerned about the fact, but seeing him reminded Tara that underneath her thin sheet, she was equally as exposed and vulnerable. With Josh sitting so close to her – the man who had terrorized her for months, the reminder caused bile to rise up into her throat. Tara lied to herself and said the sting of her unease, of her nausea, caused the tears that made her gaze blurry, the tears she refused to shed.

Kohn's unrelenting, unforgiving grip upon her left, upper arm made Tara jerk back to attention. "It's time to go now, Tara – time to go home, behave." She cringed at the way Kohn said her name. The first few times he had mispronounced it, she had gently tried to correct him. He ignored her. In fact, it was his insistence upon saying her name incorrectly that gave Tara her first sense of unease with the then agent.

From beside her, Jax growled, "she's not going anywhere."

Kohn's only response was to release the safety on the gun he had pointed towards her and grin. Jax backed down; Tara did not. Even when Josh insistently tugged against her arm, she refused to budge. But then he smirked before swinging the semi-automatic in Jax's direction.

"Alright, alright," she relented. She begged. She pleaded. Jax looked at her, obviously in defiance, not caring that his life was being threatened. But she did. She tried to reassure him with a quick glance that she knew what she was doing; that she'd be okay; that she wasn't giving in, just picking her battles.

And he must have understood, because, as she went to wrap the sheet around her body the best she could, he said, "wait," getting up and grabbing her a shirt. His shirt – the shirt he had been wearing beneath his sweatshirt that evening.

Kohn nodded, agreeing, and Tara quickly slipped the fabric over her head, pushing her arms through. She was thankful that it was just a plain white t-shirt, because otherwise, if it had been associated with Samcro at all, Tara knew Josh wouldn't have allowed her to wear it, and she needed to shield her body from Kohn's sight. Having Jax's scent surrounding her helped, too.

Gingerly, once she was covered, Tara got out of the bed, never once taking her eyes off of Kohn or the gun he had pointed towards Jax. She gestured towards her own clothes which were strewn about in the same pile as Jax's. Kohn nodded, signifying that she could walk in that direction as requested. Tara moved quickly, desperate to get to the clothes before Josh changed his mind, before he realized what she was up to. While Kohn had both guns, she had noticed an oversight he had made while Jax had been grabbing his shirt for her: he had forgotten about Jax's knife. If she could just get to the weapon, then maybe they'd have a fighting chance. After all, Tara knew there was no way she'd be able to open her small safe and retrieve her own gun in time.

As Tara's hands wrapped around the leather sheath, she felt some of the dread inside of her melt away. Grabbing the knife's hilt with her right hand, she removed it quickly, spinning around on the balls of her feet and surging upwards in one fluid motion. Without thinking about the consequences of her actions or how it went against everything she had once stood for, she pressed the blade into Josh's neck. Cold and detached yet still feeling on the verge of hysteria, she ordered, "drop the gun."

Kohn was too flabbergasted to follow her order. In fact, Tara wasn't even sure if he had comprehended what she had told him to do, but, in his shock, his aim fell away from Jax. That was a start. "I said drop the...," she started to yell, only to be cut off when the force of a body slamming into Kohn's repelled the man she had been holding the knife against away from her so harshly, Tara's arm seemed to vibrate with backlash where it still hung in the air. Even once she lowered her arm back to her side, Tara never let go of the knife.

In horror, she watched as Jax wrestled with Kohn, trying to get one or both of the guns away from the former agent. But Kohn had the upper hand, because he could use the weapon in his grip to beat Jax, and Josh was wearing his shoes – making the kicks he delivered to Jax's exposed ribs, his bare legs, his naked stomach that much more powerful. It was dark, too. Plus, it didn't help that Kohn was fighting with nothing to lose, while Jax stood to lose everything. Just as Kohn was about to bring one of the guns down against Jax's temple, Tara snapped into action. Rushing forward, the knife already thrust out in front of her, she sank the weapon into the right side of Kohn's back... only to be met with a buffer, a resistance, a thickness that shouldn't have been there. It wasn't a lethal wound, but it would slow Kohn down, and it distracted him enough that Jax was able to grab his own gun out of the back of Kohn's pants.

Still holding the knife – now bloody, though there was less blood than there should have been, Tara glanced down at the blade, her thoughts swirling back towards her earlier worries. The only way Kohn could be back was if he had escaped or... if he had been brought back on purpose. If someone... or _someones_ with power... had helped him.

In surprise, in pain, in disgust, Kohn breathed out, "you stupid bitch," reaching behind him to hold a hand against where Tara had stabbed him. His actions were reflex; she looked for the blood that should have quickly soaked his fingers, but it never appeared.

In fear, she watched as Jax stood up, weapon in hand. Tara's gaze zigzagged back and forth between the man she was in love with and the man who was obsessed with her, the man she had drove a knife into. Jax leveled the gun on Kohn, the muzzle digging into the other man's temple. Tara bit her lip, the answer to the question she didn't know enough yet to ask just out of her grasp. Jax's impossibly blue eyes snagged her own green ones. She wasn't sure what he was looking for, but then he looked away. In that moment, realization smacked Tara in the face, making her rock back on her feet.

Kohn was wearing a bullet proof vest.

"Jax, wait! No!"

But Tara's screams, her warnings were too late. Just as the words escaped past her dry, chapped lips, the sound of a gun exploding pierced the otherwise eery stillness.

Jax had heard her, though, and, after Kohn slumped down into a lifeless heap at their feet, he glanced back up at her. "It was a trap." Tara could already hear sirens in the near distance. "It was all a trap."

Silently, he put the gun down on the bed, and they just stared at each other – neither moving, neither knowing what to say.

It was too late.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

For the past hour, Stahl had been using every trick in the book to try and get Tara to incriminate Jax. To shake her. To rattle her. "Do you think I'm an idiot?"

The woman across from Tara grinned, but the gesture was used to mask frustration, anger, and even a smidgeon of fear. "Of course not, Tara. Can I call you Tara?" Stahl didn't wait for an answer before proceeding. "You're a doctor, after all. A surgeon. Top of your class, too, and on your way to making a name for yourself... well, at least you were before you moved here."

"Your point?"

Stahl folded her hands on top of the metal table, leaning back in her chair. "I can help you get all that back – get away from St. Thomas and back in Chicago where you belong, get out from underneath Samcro."

Raising a brow in mock interest, Tara asked, "in exchange for what?"

"Just the truth. You tell me what happened tonight, and you can be on the first flight out of California in the morning."

Tara leaned forward, imitating that she was about to confide in the agent. Once Stahl mimicked her actions, she stated, "I want to see Jax."

The Fed sighed, shook her head in faux sympathy. "I'm afraid that's not possible. We can't give the two of you a chance to get your stories straight."

"There's no story."

"Then there should be no problem with you telling me what happened," Stahl returned quickly.

"Actually," Tara folded her arms over her chest, sitting back once more. "I was hoping you could tell me. The last I heard, Kohn was escorted out of Charming by the local PD and was being sent back to Chicago where he was to face charges."

"Well, you see, that was Unser's doing." Stahl grimaced. "And I think we both know that calling him the police is kind of a stretch."

"Then what would you call him?"

Stahl tilted her head to the side, observed Tara cooly. "Samcro's lackey?"

She nodded – neither agreeing nor disagreeing, just observing the response. Sifting through the events of the evening since Jax shot Kohn, Tara searched for an appropriate response. She remembered how quickly Stahl and Hale arrived at the scene... like they had been waiting nearby. She recalled the looks of apprehension they shared when they saw that Kohn had been shot in the head, and she could still see how close they stood, how quietly they whispered to one another after they arrived at the police station with Jax and Tara in tow. Finally, meeting Stahl's cold, calculating gaze, Tara queried, "and what would you call Hale – a coworker, a colleague, a partner? Your boyfriend?"

The stiff smile deflated from the agent's face. Stahl scoffed. "Well, aren't you the observant one."

"Yeah, well, when one's violently stalked by a Fed, being able to see the little things comes in handy, becomes the difference between life and death."

"That's a little dramatic, Tara."

For several moments, Tara watched the dismissive woman across from her, debating on how much she should say. While she didn't care what Stahl believed on a personal level – after all, she had long since gotten used to law enforcement officials closing rank and ignoring her claims against Kohn, the female agent had used Tara's history with Kohn against her, against Jax, and was now denying that same history in an effort to further her own agenda and protect her career.

"One night, after work, I went out with a coworker – another doctor. We weren't close, just casual friends. He was meeting his wife for dinner, but he must have sensed that I was lonely, so he insisted that I come along, have a drink with him while he waited. He said his wife was always late. So, we went down the street to this little pub all the hospital employees frequented. It was a hole, but it always had the Bulls game on, and it served killer wings. He got a beer; I got a glass of wine, and, for twenty minutes, we sat and watched basketball together, occasionally swapping war stories about work. Then, he got up to use the restroom – said he'd be back in two minutes, and he wanted me to stick around and meet his wife. He never came back."

Tara paused to make sure that Stahl was listening, purposefully catching the agent's eye before continuing. "I waited. Eventually, his wife got there – late... as he predicted. We just thought he had gotten sick. Then, we started to think that he had been paged by the hospital, so I called into work, but there was nothing – no emergency, no case that would have required him to leave without word. We asked the bartender to check the bathroom, and he did, but he wasn't there. At this point, his wife was getting scared, and I was getting suspicious. She started calling their friends and family; I just waited, unsure of what to do or how to help but knowing that I couldn't just leave. Half an hour after the wife arrived, someone ran into the bar, screaming for help. There was a guy in the alley, beaten to a bloody pulp. The stranger didn't even know if the guy was still alive.

"I ran outside. As a doctor, I could help; as a person, I felt responsible... for I knew. Kohn had been following me for weeks at that point. He broke into my apartment, had keys made. He approached my coworkers, told them I was his girlfriend and he was thinking about proposing. What did they think? He'd feign forgetfulness to find out where I was, what I was doing; he'd pretend to be simpleminded but sweet and innocent – harmless – to get my number when I changed it. He was possessive – didn't like it when I talked to the male baggers at the grocery store, when I took too long paying my taxi driver. He had me completely boxed and caged in my own life. Maybe that's why my coworker took pity on me that night – because he sensed how scared and isolated I was and wanted to help.

"Anyway," Tara shook off that thought and returned to her memory. "I found him beaten in the snow – barely recognizable. It looked like someone took a club to him. I'm guessing Kohn used a baseball bat. My coworker had a broken jaw, broken left eye socket, broken ribs, a broken arm, a broken leg, and both of his hands had been smashed to the point where he'd never operate again. He was lucky that they didn't have to amputate them. He had an extremely bad concussion, bruises and contusions all over his body. There was blood everywhere... including some used to write 'Mine' on the wall. I showed this to the cops, told them about Kohn and how I'd been trying to get a restraining order against him, but no one would grant me one because he was a Fed. But they protected him, too – didn't believe me and said that I was having an affair with the victim, that he wrote the word himself. It didn't matter that his hands were pulverized and there was no way he could have physically done so; it didn't matter that his wife defended him, defended me, and said that there was no way we were having an affair. Kohn got away with nearly killing a man... just like he got away with stalking me, hurting me, nearly killing me."

"What happened to your friend was horrible," Stahl sympathized. And for a moment, she almost sounded human, compassionate. But then she shrugged her shoulders. "However, I agree with the Chicago PD on this one. You have no proof it was Kohn."

Nodding in assessment, Tara stated, "and that tells me exactly what you are. You're just another crooked Fed... like the rest of your agency."

"You really want to go there; you want to accuse the entire ATF of being corrupt?"

"If the dirty badge fits."

"Now, you're just sounding paranoid, Tara – like a conspiracy theorist."

Changing topics and sitting up straight, Tara asked, "are you charging me with anything?"

Stahl switched gears right along with her. "As of right now, no, but we're still investigating. There's that little knife wound to consider." And the bullet-proof vest Kohn was wearing, too, but Tara didn't say that out loud, because she didn't want to play her hand before all the cards were dealt. If she cried entrapment before Jax's lawyer became involved, she could give Stahl and Hale a better chance of covering up their tracks. Standing up, the female agent ordered, "we still need to get your statement, so don't leave town."

Before the cop could walk out of the interrogation room, Tara demanded to know, "and Jax? Are you charging him?"

"We're holding him for questioning."

"And has he been allowed to contact his lawyer?"

"It's late," Stahl fairly simpered. "We're waiting until morning. After all, we wouldn't want to wake Mr. Teller's legal representative up in the middle of the night and not have him be on top of his game now, would we?"

Tara stood as well, leaning forward over the table with her hands braced against the cool metal. "when I give my statement, I want Chief Unser to be here."

"Yes. I'm sure you do."

"And I want to see Jax. Now."

Stahl's brows lifted in tandem with a soft chuckle before she opened the door and started to walk away. Before she could get too far, Tara called out, "my room?"

"Is a crime scene. We'll let you know when you can go back in."

"I need to get some things from it," Tara ordered. Stahl didn't request, so why should she? "Some clothes, toiletries, my purse."

Stahl ran her gaze over Tara, appraising her appearance. In the bedlam that happened after Jax shot Kohn, she had barely managed to slip on a pair of jeans underneath the t-shirt she was still wearing. Jax's t-shirt. Her hair was in disarray – wild and uncombed from being dragged out of bed by a gun-wielding psychopath. "I'll have Deputy Chief Hale escort you," Stahl offered, smirking because she knew Tara had no grounds to fight her decision and that Tara would hate having to spend any time with Charming's second in command. "Make sure you don't tamper with any evidence."

Tara rounded the table, walked towards the door, and then made to pass by the agent. As she approached Stahl, she paused, met the other woman's eyes. "I'll leave evidence tampering to you. After all, that's more your style, isn't it, _June_?"

Without waiting for a response, she confidently marched out of the precinct, knowing Hale was on her heels the entire time but unwilling to show any weakness.

…

By the time Tara got back to her room, the sky was starting to lighten with the rapidly approaching dawn. As promised... or threatened... depending upon how one looked at it, Hale accompanied her. He drove her to the inn, and then he followed Tara inside, standing guard in the doorway while she quickly worked to pack a bag. It was all for show, however.

Because of her schedule and penchant for staying at the hospital, Tara didn't need any clothes or her toiletries. She kept plenty of supplies at work. But there were things she wanted to get for personal reasons, things that neither she nor Jax needed the police getting their hands on, so she put on an act, and Stahl and Hale were too intent upon manipulating her that they didn't see Tara manipulating them.

To keep up the ruse and to disguise her more duplicitous actions, Tara rifled through every drawer, shutting one loudly before going onto another and, in general, moving with a fury, with a mad sense of desperation and confusion. Back and forth, from one side of the room to the other, returning to drawers she had already gone through, her actions had a decided, intended lack of cohesiveness meant to disarm. And it seemed to work, because, halfway through her packing, Hale started to look away. He watched the hallway instead of her, seemingly almost embarrassed to be witnessing her physical breakdown. In his distraction, Tara snagged and buried her lockbox underneath a large pile of underwear and bras, and she retrieved Jax's kutte from where they had secured it inside of a pile of her sweaters, putting it in her duffle as well.

Moving into the ensuite bathroom, she not only grabbed her excuse for being there – her toiletries, but Tara also grabbed the wet, bloodied rags she had hidden before the cops arrived earlier. As she and Jax had listened to the sirens get closer and closer, Tara had reacted instinctively – wetting washcloths and insisting that Jax clean off the blood splattered on his otherwise naked body before getting dressed and washing away the gun powder residue from his hands. Tara had wiped down his knife, too. Knowing that, if she tried to rinse the rags out in the sink that traces of blood would be found on the porcelain and in the pipes, she had elected to, instead, fold the washcloths and put them back in the cupboard like they had never been used, placing them between otherwise clean and dry towels in the hopes that Stahl and Hale would be more concerned about taking them in than performing a thorough forensic sweep. Her gamble had paid off, and Tara shoved both the bloodied towels and those that had been used to buffer them into her bag. Turning off the light, she exited the bathroom and moved back out into the bedroom, grabbing up her purse as she approached Hale.

He allowed her to pass by him before turning back around and locking the room, refastening the crime scene tape before indicating that she should precede him down the stairs. Once they were outside, Tara moved towards the front of the house, already reaching inside of her purse for her cell. She only stopped and pivoted around to face him when Hale called out, "what are you doing?"

Narrowing her eyes and leaning her head slightly forward, for she thought it would be obvious, Tara responded incredulously, "calling a cab."

Frustrated, Hale said, "I can give you a ride to a hotel."

"And I don't need your help to get to the hospital."

Surprised, the deputy chief questioned, "you're staying there?"

Tara shrugged. "Why not?" Before turning her back on him once more, she added, "your girlfriend didn't tell me where I could and could not stay; she just said not to leave town."

"Stahl's not... We're not...," Hale sputtered. Tara silently snickered at his rush to defend and deny his affair with the ATF agent. Because that's what they were having: an affair. While they could lie until they were blue in the face, Tara was convinced that the two cops were sleeping together. "Do you really think that's a good idea – bringing that kind of attention down on St. Thomas? You're involved in a murder investigation where the prime suspect is your biker thug of a boyfriend."

Tara spun around and quickly stalked across the yard to approach the deputy chief who was standing there, hands on his hips acting superior and condemnatory – like he actually had a right to judge her. "No, what I am is a respected surgeon who is caught up in a joke – another one of your attempts to railroad Jax... who also happens to be a devoted father to one of St. Thomas' patients."

"And the man that you're sleeping with."

"You're really going to ridicule me for crossing _that _professional line?"

Hale looked away, backed down, but he still wouldn't give up. "I still don't think you should be around the hospital right now. It doesn't need your kind of bad PR."

Narrowing the distance between them, Tara stood toe to toe with the cop. Lowering her voice, she said, "do you think you're the first person who's tried to get in the way of my career, because you're not. You and your kind," she sneered towards his badge, "have taken practically everything from me – my safety, my security, my home, and now you're trying to take the first person who has cared about me in a really long time, but, if you think you're going to take being a doctor from me, too, then you're not only incompetent; you're delusional."

With one last sneer, she turned and walked away, already dialing for her cab. Without a word, Hale waited there, watching her, until Tara's taxi pulled up, she got in, and she then rode away.

…

As soon as Tara arrived at St. Thomas, she set off for the on-call room. After stashing her duffle bag in her locker, she put her towels with other linens that would be sent out to be laundered. It was a hospital, so no one would question the blood. With that accomplished and one less thing to worry about, Tara returned to the staff-only room, taking a quick shower and dressing in scrubs before leaving once again, grabbing a banana on her way out. She'd need to start her rounds soon, but, before she got lost in the hustle and bustle of her work, she needed to do one last, personal thing. While she walked, Tara ate the fruit – her actions rote and not born from actual hunger.

Her steps were quick, rushed, but no one questioned her presence or her hurry. After all, they were used to both. If Tara didn't stay over night at the hospital, then she was often early for her shift, and, if the news was out about Kohn's shooting, then her coworkers were oblivious to it. However, Tara doubted that Stahl would leak the story to the press anytime soon... despite Hale's warnings of bad PR for St. Thomas, because, once others started digging into the investigation, the holes in Stahl's version of events would be exposed for the world – and the ATF and Unser – to see. If their plans were to succeed – and Tara had no doubt that they were operating under ulterior motives, Kohn's death just another move on the chess board, that couldn't happen.

"What the hell did you do?"

Before Tara could reach her destination – Abel, Gemma was there, lying in wait for her. Without responding to the accusation, she grabbed the older woman by the arm, hauling her into the NICU room, shutting the door behind them and closing the blinds. Once she was assured that they had all the privacy they could get, Tara turned back to Jax's mother. "This is not the time and certainly not the place to do this, Gemma."

But her cautioning was ignored. "I got woke up this morning at the ass crack of dawn when the club's lawyer called, asking questions about the murder charges _my son _is facing."

"There aren't going to be any murder charges."

"Yeah, well, the stab wound to the back and the gunshot wound to the head say different," Gemma challenged.

Calmly, she told the other woman, "Jax didn't stab Kohn; I did." Shocked, Gemma reared back, her eyes going wide. Before she could ask any other questions, Tara continued, "it was then that I realized he was wearing a bullet-proof vest, but it was too late to warn Jax. He'd already shot him. But it was clearly entrapment. Stahl and Hale planned this with Kohn; they just didn't factor in every scenario, and, now, there's a dead ATF agent."

She could see the wheels turning in Gemma's head. "Entrapment's hard to prove."

"Then Jax's lawyer goes for self-defense... which was the case. Kohn came in looking for a fight. He took Jax's gun, and he pulled on me." With clear, concise statements, Tara laid out the facts for Gemma. "When I wouldn't cooperate and leave with him, he aimed at Jax. That's when I played along so I could get Jax's knife. I held it on Kohn, told him to drop the gun, and that's when Jax attacked, trying to get at least one of the guns away from Kohn. Kohn got the upper hand, so I stabbed him. In Kohn's distraction, Jax got one of the guns and shot him. We weren't going to leave there without someone dying. It was our lives or his. Self defense. And I'll testify to that in court... if it comes to that, but I really don't think it will."

Tara was pleasantly surprised by how rational Gemma was behaving. Besides her initial burst of emotion when they first saw one another, the older woman was approaching the situation with detachment. This was the Gemma Teller-Morrow that made for a formidable opponent, the woman who could plot to kill her own husband and mentally berate her addict of a daughter-in-law into overdosing. Though Tara hated what Gemma was capable of, in this case, in this moment, she appreciated not having to deal with her typically brash and loud personality. Instead of lashing out at Tara, Gemma seemed to be assessing her. Finally, after several moments of silent analysis, Jax's mother ordered, "you don't say a word to anybody – not Hale, not that ATF bitch, no one. You talk to the club's lawyer, and that's it. I don't care if you think you're helping Jax or not, not a word, Doc. Do we understand each other?"

"Gemma, I know how this works. I'm not going to say anything."

The other woman nodded, her dark and dangerous eyes narrowing into menacing slits. "The problem is that you never should have been made aware of anything that you could tell in the first place. My son forgot the rules, and he made a mistake with you. Now, I'm going to have to clean up his mess, make sure it doesn't come back to bite him or the club in the ass."

Raising a brow in silent challenge, Tara stepped forward, closing the distance between them. "Jax wasn't the only one to tell me things, Gemma... or did you forget about last night? How is the Irishman, by the way?"

"Don't threaten me, Doc."

"It wasn't a threat," Tara shot back, stepping away and bringing her arms up and out before her in a gesture of peace and goodwill. "Just a reminder that you're not perfect, and that I'm not a mistake – not for Jax, not for Abel, not even for your precious club."

Gemma moved towards the door, but, before leaving, she paused long enough to deliver one last, parting shot. "That's Jax's _precious _club, too, you little bitch. Don't forget it." To punctuate her words, Gemma slammed the door shut behind her.

Tara took a deep breath, needing to just let go of everything weighing her down – from Jax being in jail, to Stahl and Hale's machinations, to her latest _conversation _with Gemma. Once she was centered again, Tara crossed the room and approached Abel's incubator, a smile already lifting the corners of her mouth and brightening up her tired eyes. He'd soon be moved to the regular nursery, but, selfishly, Tara was grateful that Abel was still in the relative privacy of his own room.

"Hey there, little guy," she greeted, moving to take him out of the warming machine. Once Abel was settled into Tara's arms, she lowered her face to nuzzle the downy hair on top of his tiny head, his sweet baby smell soothing her further. After several seconds, she pulled away, grinning down upon him once again. "How about some breakfast?"

…

Tara was at the point of exhaustion where she just wanted to cry.

It had been such a long day.

Really, it had been a long night, too. After barely sleeping the night before, she had gone from one confrontation to the next – first Kohn, then Stahl, then Hale, and then Gemma – each one their own brand of nightmare. True, she managed to grab a few moments of peace and rest holding Abel early that morning as she fed him, but that time with the little, miracle baby felt so far away, so distant. What felt present, what felt unfortunately familiar, was the grind of work and the seemingly never ending struggle to stay just one step ahead of the mess she and Jax were currently embroiled in.

Between patients, Tara had been in near constant contact with the club's lawyer. He had called her to arrange a meeting, and then she had gone down to the precinct to give her statement during her lunch break. Refreshingly, Rosen had been adamant about Tara telling the truth. Recognizing that it was their strongest defense, she didn't have to lie to Stahl during her interview, but it had been tiring nonetheless. Recounting the horrors Joshua Kohn had visited upon her while still living in Chicago and how he had followed her to Charming with his obsession, leading to the ultimate culmination the evening before had been emotionally draining. Nothing was left unexamined. The more ugly examples of Kohn's derangement that Tara could provide, the stronger Jax's case.

So, she told the authorities about how their _relationship_ was nothing more than a couple of drinks, a dinner, and a one night stand she had regretted since the moment it happened; how she had broke it off with the then ATF agent and tried to avoid him afterwards, but he just wouldn't let her go; how his possessiveness encroached upon every aspect of her life – personal and professional – and only got worse after she had an abortion. She retold the story of the innocent coworker who was brutalized because he was foolish enough to be nice to her. Tara confessed how Kohn would follow her places, cornering her and creating scenes; how he would lie in wait inside of her apartment – the apartment he somehow always had keys to no matter how many times she had the locks changed – to terrorize her, demean her. Tara slowly laid out the progression of Kohn's obsession – how he went from controlling her emotionally and mentally until when he finally started to control her physically as well – grabbing her arms, shoving her into walls, gripping her neck – bruising her as a way to brand her; how she had no doubt that he would have raped her if she wouldn't have fought back. She related her struggles in convincing law enforcement to believe her – how she went from his superiors to one Chicago police department after another until, finally, her haunted and battered appearance was just too much for one cop out of dozens to ignore. Even after the restraining order was granted, however, Kohn wouldn't leave her alone. He just kept coming, and coming, and coming until, one day, Tara couldn't take it anymore. So, she quit her job, found an unassuming hospital in the middle of nowhere that was hiring, and moved her entire life across country in the hopes that she'd finally just be left alone.

Obviously, that didn't happen.

When it came to describing her last confrontation with Kohn, Tara kept to the facts. She didn't bring up his ranting accusations and delusions; she simply talked about how she woke to the cold steel of a gun against her skin, how he demanded she leave with him or else, how he threatened both her life and Jax's. She confessed that, when Kohn got the upper hand and she feared for Jax's safety, she stabbed the former agent. Tara brought up the bullet-proof vest, how the sirens went off even before she knew herself that Kohn was dead, and how Stahl and Hale, the first two officials to arrive on the scene, had made no secret about the fact that they were willing to do anything, to use anyone, in order to take down Jax and Samcro. Rosen, Jax's attorney, wanted everything she could possibly say against both the ATF and Charming PD on record, everything that would support their claims of entrapment. Because that's what had happened: Stahl and Hale had brought Kohn back to Charming and sent him after Jax. They strapped him into a bullet-proof vest, hoping the animosity between the two men would culminate in Jax shooting their co-conspirator, either never considering that Jax would aim for the head or believing such a risk was worth it, and Kohn, in the grandiose of his insanity, would never think to question anything that would get him closer to Tara.

By the time the interview was over, Tara realized that, never before that afternoon, had she actually recounted her entire history with the unhinged Fed, and, in her desperation to just get away from him, she'd never once stopped to consider why. Why her? What did she do to inspire such an unbalanced reaction from a man who otherwise, up to their meeting, had seemed perfectly poised and put together – a real professional? It was with those thoughts that she had returned to work that afternoon, finally getting a call that evening that she could visit Jax, as she had been requesting since the night before, in lock-up. Luckily, until official charges were filed, he was remaining in a cell at the local Charming station. Given his club association, this was a huge relief.

As soon as she stepped into the dingy, concrete hall that opened up into the cells, Jax was at the bars, asking her how she was. "Are you okay?" He was the one locked up, but he seemed absolutely unconcerned about his own predicament. It touched and infuriated Tara at the same time; it certainly didn't surprise her.

"I'm fine."

"Stahl's not harassing you, Hale's leaving you alone," he pressed.

Tara shook her head, smiling slightly in an effort to ease his concern. "Jax, they're going to dog my every step until this is all over, and we both know it." He went to protest, to voice his animosity towards the two cops, but Tara kept talking before he could say a word. "I can handle them; I can handle myself. I've been dealing with bullies of one kind or another since my mom died. I'm more worried about you. And Abel."

She watched as he seemed to deflate before her very eyes. Evidently, Jax had those same fears regarding his son. Reaching through the bars, he took her hands in his, brought them up so that he could bend down and rest his forehead against their clasped fists. In doing so, Jax pulled her even closer – their torsos both pressed up against the metal. "Hale's going to use this to go after my parental rights."

"Or at least he'll threaten to... unless you cooperate. Roll on the club."

His hair fell down to whisper against their fingers. Tara let go of his hands so she could brush his too long, blonde locks behind his ears once more. She wanted to be able to see his face. Looking up at her once more, Jax confessed, "even if I wanted to turn rat – which I don't; that's not how I fix Samcro. But, even if I did, that wouldn't protect Abel. That would just create a whole different kind of danger for him. For you. Hale has to realize that."

"I don't think Hale cares at this point," Tara told him honestly. "When his vendetta against you and the club started, I have no doubt that he thought he was doing the right thing. That he was the good guy and you were the bad guy. But somewhere along the line, he lost sight of why he's doing this. It isn't about protecting the innocent anymore; it's about hurting those he feels are guilty, about hurting you. He's become blinded by his hate." Curious, she asked, "where does his animosity come from anyway?"

Jax shrugged. "We've never liked each other. Growing up, we came from different worlds, had different friends. Hale's old man is a judge, and his family has money. Samcro stood for everything the Hales were against, but not Charming. The town embraced us. That always pissed Hale off. It didn't matter how much trouble we got into, we did enough good that people could overlook the bikes, and the leather, and the tattoos. It was the same way with me in school. I skipped classes, eventually dropped out, got arrested, but people still liked me, whereas Hale did everything right, and no one could stand him. I think he went off to college, thinking he'd come back as a cop, and everything would be different. But, by then, I was VP and even more entrenched in Charming, and he was just the annoying, cocky son of a bitch with a badge who pulled people over and gave them speeding tickets. It wasn't the grand homecoming Hale always imagined, and it was yet something else he blamed me for. Things only got worse between us at that point."

It was all so sad, so pathetic. "So, basically, he never moved past high school."

"It's a little more complicated than that, but yeah. I guess that works."

From outside the cells, Tara could hear someone approaching, and she knew their time was almost up. Stretching up on her tiptoes so she could look Jax in the eye, she became completely serious. "I already told Gemma this, but I need you to hear it, too. No matter what Stahl and Hale try to do to intimidate me, I'm not talking, Jax – not about anything that Rosen doesn't approve first."

He shook his head in argument. "No." This time, when she went to protest, he cut her off. "Tara, you do whatever's necessary to protect yourself."

"No, _we _do whatever's necessary to protect Abel. He comes first," she stressed – refusing to blink, refusing to back down. "No matter what."

After searching her gaze for several seconds, Jax finally relented, nodded, agreed. In response, Tara pushed forward, kissing him briefly through the bars. For just a moment, he moved away from her, looked behind her, and Tara knew that there was an officer present to escort her out. Before she could pull away, however, Jax was whispering intently, his forehead resting against hers. "Will you stay at my place... so I'll know you're safe?"

Tara bit her bottom lip, torn. "I don't want to be there without you. It doesn't... it wouldn't feel right." That was the home where he would raise his son, where he had once lived with his ex-wife. If Tara were to stay there without him... "I'm just going to crash at the hospital, stay close to Abel."

His brows raised in emphasis as he beseeched her, "just think about it." Then, before she could turn him down a second time, Jax kissed her once more. It was soft, and slow, and almost tentative – meant to hold them over until they could see each other again, while urging her, at the same time, to make sure that their next visit would be soon. When Tara pulled away, she was breathless, Jax was grinning smugly despite their current situation, and the cop behind her was awkwardly clearing his throat. Licking her lips and savoring the taste of Jax that lingered there, Tara turned around and walked away. Until she disappeared into the hall, she felt Jax's gaze tracking her every move. It was just the reassurance she needed.

…

After Tara left the precinct, she stopped to pick up some dinner before heading back to the hospital. Her plan had been to spend the night with Abel, reassuring the little boy with her presence and allowing his innocence to reassure her as well. But, like with all good intentions, they paved her way towards hell. Tara didn't even make it inside St. Thomas before she was pulled into an emergency, her supper cast aside and forgotten within seconds.

With no explanation, no call ahead, a man had been dropped off outside of the front entrance – his body burning with fever. When Tara found him, he was barely coherent – ranting and mumbling in the throes of his distress, near unconsciousness. He could barely breathe, his blood pressure was extremely low, and his heartbeat irregular. When she palpated his stomach, waiting for a gurney, it was tender, and the man winced in obvious pain. There was so much blood on him – both new and old – that it was difficult to tell where he was injured. It wasn't until he was laid out on the gurney, causing him to cry out in pain, that they realized he had been shot.

In the ass.

Because the patient was in septic shock, Tara didn't have time to wonder about that coincidence. Instead, she just had to focus on the task at hand. Like every other surgeon, she had once gone through a rotation in the ER. Though Tara was quite adept at keeping her head while treating trauma patients, she preferred the specialized artistry of the neonatal unit. So, she wasn't out of her depth as she helped treat the anonymous patient. By the time the on-call ER attending took over the case, the man had started murmuring in a foreign language – gaelic, Tara believed, and she noticed that he was clutching tightly to rosary beads.

In a daze, she left the emergency room, traveling up to the floor she worked on. Distantly, Tara realized that she never ate her dinner, but she was suddenly too distracted to worry about food. On autopilot, she cleaned up – showered away the blood that seemed to have soaked through her clothes and changed into something casual, something that she could be seen at work wearing yet still comfortable enough to sleep in. By the time she made it to Abel's room, word had spread that the septic shock patient had died, and Tara had concluded that there were just too many coincidences for the man not to be the same one shot because of his association with the club. This was important, this was something that she and Jax could potentially use to their advantage, but, at least for the night, Tara refused to focus on death; rather, she wanted – needed – to focus on Abel.

So, that's what she did. She fed him, changed him, rocked him. She held him long after he fell asleep in her arms, talking to him not only about Jax but also telling him about her own mother, about how Chicago looked in that darkest part of the night right before dawn after an ice storm, and about what it felt like to drive her mustang at full speed down an open, country road. Tara whispered soothing words until she put herself to sleep, too, and then she stayed there all night, Abel curled up in her secure embrace while she finally, finally slept.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

"Tara?" With eyes narrowed in focus, Jax stood up from where he had been laying down on the prison hard cot – laying down, not sleeping. As Tara watched him approach where she was standing outside of the bars to his cell, she took in his haggard appearance, the dark circles under his eyes, and she just knew that he hadn't slept a wink all night. "What are you doing here so early?" As if out of habit, Jax glanced around, looking for some indication of what time it really was. Although he couldn't see it, outside, it was still dark.

"Unser called me... at the hospital. Actually, he had me paged," Tara rolled her eyes in recollection of the older chief's antics. "He's not very sneaky, is he?"

Jax snorted. "You'd be surprised."

"Anyway, he said that Hale and Stahl are never here this early, so, if I wanted to see you without having the hassle of dealing with them, to come before visiting hours technically start."

"Won't the other cops just rat on him?"

Tara shrugged. "They don't call it a graveyard shift for nothing, I guess." After he smirked in reaction to her comment, she added, "plus, I got the impression that not everybody around here is pleased with the ATF's presence in Charming... or with Hale working with them."

Slowly, he nodded, absorbing her words. "That makes sense. The people around here, even when they don't like us, they don't like outsiders coming in and telling them how to handle their shit either."

With a quick glance around them just to make sure that no one had come in behind her and was listening, Tara became satisfied that they were alone and leaned against the bars, lowering her voice. "All of this got me thinking, though. We were hesitant to request a copy of your dad's accident report, because we didn't want anyone getting wind that we were looking into his death, but, with everyone so distracted around here, it might be a good time to ask, especially if I can do it without Hale, or Stahl, or even Unser finding out."

Jax reached through the bars to grasp Tara's face, angling it so that he could look directly into her eyes. Unblinkingly, he searched her gaze. "Are you sure?" Before she could say yes, he pressed, "I mean, are you _really _sure about this, babe – not about helping me. I know you'd do that. But about getting involved in this – in the club, with my mother and Clay? Even if they didn't kill my dad, you know what they're capable of." It was almost like, rather than trying to convince her into backing down, Jax was explaining his own hesitance, his own reasons why he _didn't _want her to help. "And we have no idea how long I'll be in here – locked up, where I can't protect you."

"I can handle myself."

"Tara...," Jax started to argue with her, but she cut him off.

"No, I mean it. If I learned anything from what happened with Kohn, it's that I can't run away from shit. I tried that. It didn't work. And depending upon other people to solve your problems? Nobody cares. Are Gemma and Clay dangerous? Absolutely," Tara agreed with him. "But letting this go and ignoring it isn't going to make them any safer. The longer they get away with their crimes, the more likely they'll keep committing them. Your father. Lowell Harland Sr. Gemma almost killed Wendy."

"Yeah. And I don't want her to come after you next."

"Better me than someone who won't see her coming."

Sighing, Jax said, "I don't like it, Tara."

"But you see my point," she finished for him. He didn't say it, but Tara could read the reluctant agreement in his tired yet still sharp eyes. Then he closed them in resignation, and she knew he accepted her plan.

With his head leaning against the bars, Jax requested, "talk to me about something else. Tell me something good." His lashes fluttered open, and a wide, genuine smile lit up his scruffy face. "How was Abel last night?"

Tara returned his grin. "Perfect. After everything that happened yesterday... only to stumble across that patient in septic shock... Oh wait!" Her eyes went wide, self-chastisement rushing through Tara's veins and flooding her cheeks with color. "I can't believe I forgot about this... even if just for a few minutes."

"What?" He become worried again. "What happened?"

Once more lowering her voice to a whisper, Tara shared, "last night, someone dropped this guy off outside of the hospital. He was delirious with fever, with sepsis. His blood pressure was dangerously low, because, get this, he had been shot. Twice. In the ass." Jax's gaze widened in recognition, his features showing his shock. "Eventually, he started mumbling in a foreign language – gaelic... while gripping a set of rosary beads."

"Holy shit," be breathed out. "The Irishman – the club's new IRA contact, the one Gemma wanted you to help treat."

"Exactly," Tara said. "It has to be him. The hospital hasn't identified him yet, but, as soon as they do, this could be big, Jax. Not only will it affect the club, but it could impact your case, too. If we could..."

Tara's excited words, her idea, was cut short when a big, booming voice called out – with each word getting closer and closer to where they were both standing, now looking out into the hallway. "Unser said you didn't sleep at all last night. Man, you wouldn't survive a week in Chino, let alone five..." The man who stepped around the corner looked vaguely familiar to Tara. He might have been at the hospital the day Abel was born, but he just as easily could have simply looked familiar to her, because, like so many members of Samcro, he was a large, imposing man wearing all black and a leather kutte while in desperate need of a haircut and a shave. Yet, despite this, she knew exactly who he was, because Jax had told her about him – about his best friend who had served five years in the state pen. "Jax." Any previous warmth that might have been brightening the man's otherwise somber tone was gone, and his face had become an impenetrable mask of aloofness.

Either Jax didn't recognize his best friend's detachment, or he was used to it. "Hey, Ope," he greeted, gesturing towards her. "This is Doctor Tara Knowles. Tara, this is Harry Winston."

For a brief moment, Tara considered holding out her hand in introduction, but then she recalled Gemma's reception towards that greeting, and she immediately changed her mind, for Opie looked even less pleased to be meeting her. Hell, he looked downright pissed that she was even there. Still, though, he was important to Jax, and she'd never been intimidated by a hard stare before, so why start in that moment? Settling for a nod in Opie's direction, Tara said, "it's nice to meet you."

In return, Opie stared at her for a good, long five seconds before, once again, shifting his focus back to his brother and friend. "We need to talk."

"Sure. What's up?"

Opie frowned in reaction to Jax's casual tone, his easy acquiescence. "It's about business."

"So?" Jax, amused, lifted his brows as if the statement was obvious. "It's not like I thought you came all the way down here to tell me what you had for breakfast, Ope."

Opie didn't say anything, but his silence spoke volumes. With every moment that went by, he became more annoyed with Jax, with the situation, and most especially with Tara's presence. Hooking a finger over her shoulder and slowly walking backwards, she said, "I'll just... go. See you again...," she started to say, only for Jax to interject – his face losing all of its former affability.

"Tara can stay."

With a measuring, sidelong glance out of the corner of his eye in Tara's direction, Opie stepped closer to the cell Jax was in. "What the hell are you doing, man? This is club shit. No women."

Jax scoffed. "Like Gemma doesn't know everything that goes down with Samcro."

"Gemma's different," Opie defended. "She's mom; she's Clay's old lady."

"And I trust Tara."

"Well, I don't," Jax's best friend countered. As the two club members continued to go back and forth, their voices rose with each passing remark; their stances became more stiff, more tense. "I don't trust her; I don't know her." Looking Jax up and down in a disgusted manner, Opie finished with, "hell, at this point, I don't know who the fuck you are either."

Jax's gaze narrowed as he folded his arms against his chest. His body language screamed confrontation, and Tara was starting to believe it was probably a good thing one of the two men were behind bars. The last thing the lifelong friends needed was to come to physical blows, and the last thing she wanted was to be the cause of such an altercation. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you're barely around, and, when you are, you fight Clay on every decision he makes."

"Somebody has to. Clay has us so deep into shit we have no business dealing with that we're drowning. He's killing Samcro."

"And your mother," Opie wanted to know, not backing down. "Is you pushing Gemma away and keeping her from her grandson Clay's fault, too?" Without waiting for a response, Opie answered the question himself. "No, that would be _Tara's_ influence. Ever since she showed up in this town, I don't even recognize you."

Suddenly, Jax seemed to deflate, the fight leaving him. "You're right," he admitted to his best friend. As she listened, Tara found herself biting her bottom lip in anticipation, in dread. She just knew that, whatever Jax was going to say next, it would change... everything. "My relationship with Tara has changed me. It's made me see things differently; it's made me see things that I never saw before. But it's not just Tara, Ope. It's Abel. It's my father. It's how everything that's bad in our lives can be traced back to running guns."

Stoically, Opie responded, "I don't see it that way."

"I know you don't, Ope, and, for the life of me, I don't understand how you can look at the club after everything it's done to you, to your family, and not be second guessing it."

"My family, my place in the club, is my business, Jackson; not yours."

"If that's how you want it, then I could say the same."

Without either man saying anything else, Opie turned on his heel and quickly stalked out. Tara watched him go, and then she shifted so she could watch Jax's reaction. She found sadness on his face but also a sense of resignation and acceptance – like the confrontation she had just witnessed had been a long time coming between the two friends. Crossing the distance that separated them so she could once more stand just in front of his cell, Tara lifted her hands to grip the bars, causing Jax to move closer as well. He tangled his fingers through hers the best he could. "Are you okay?"

Instead of answering her, though, Jax asked his own question. "I know it's not exactly neonatal surgery, but do you think you can rush the identification of the Irishman?"

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking a dead IRA member in Charming will blow Hale and Stahl's plans against me to shit."

"Won't that bring more heat down on the club, though," Tara wanted to know.

Jax shrugged, smirked. "Clay got us into this mess. He'll have to figure a way out, or this will finally give me the ammunition I need to kill the gun deal once and for all."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Good. But be careful," Jax cautioned. "Clay's not going to want anyone figuring out who that Irishman is... or his connections to the IRA and Samcro. We need that body identified before it disappears."

Deciding that he required more than words as reassurance, Tara grinned, leaned in, kissed him, and then pulled away before he could attempt to deepen the embrace, her smile still firmly in place. "Get some sleep. I'll see you again tonight."

…

"I have to tell you, Doc," Wayne Unser greeted Tara as he made his way through the double doors. "I feel like I'm about to get whacked. A secret meeting in a morgue? That's pretty twisted."

Tara didn't even look up from the corpse she was examining. "I'm a healer, Chief, not a killer."

"Yet you're standing over a dead body, and, two nights ago, you stabbed a guy."

Unser wasn't actually afraid of her. As odd as it was, he was attempting to make small talk... probably because, though not anxious, he was tense and awkward. For a lifelong cop, he didn't seem very comfortable standing in a morgue, but that could have been because their location was a very pointed reminder of his own mortality, something any cancer patient would be quite aware of as it was. Finally meeting the chief's gaze, she corrected, "no, I stabbed a monster."

"Point taken."

"Have there been any new developments with Jax's case?"

Unser rolled his eyes, shuffled his feet, and tugged on his belt. "Hell, besides babysitting the cells at night, I've practically been stripped of my own department. Stahl's running the show, and she's not talking to me." Before Tara could respond, he continued. "But I know Hale. That boy is going to call in every favor he _and_ his judge daddy have in order to keep Jax locked up. My guess? They'll eventually settle on some trumped up weapons charge, but, for now, they're stalling, because they know any judge worth his salt... and a few who aren't... wouldn't even consider manslaughter charges, let alone murder one – not after your testimony; it'd be a PR nightmare for the ATF, and that's not even taking into account the lack of physical evidence against Jax." Raising a curious brow at her, Unser stated, "I'd still like to know how you pulled that off."

"A lady never tells her secrets."

The chief snorted. "Well, at least an Old Lady doesn't."

Tara wasn't quite sure how she felt about the club term being applied to her, but she knew that Unser didn't mean any harm by it. In fact, he said it with respect and admiration. So, she just smirked and then got them back on track. "What about bail?"

"You can't have a bail hearing without an arraignment first, and you can't arraign someone until they've been charged. Stahl and Hale arrested Jax without a warrant, meaning they can hold him for up to seven days without pressing charges. After that?" Unser shrugged, the casual action belying the animosity he had boiling underneath the surface towards his deputy chief and the ATF. "Who the hell knows. Certainly not me. It's just my god damned department."

"Is there anything you can tell me – anything that could help?"

The chief seemed to consider her request for several moments before slowly beginning to nod his head in the affirmative. "Yeah. If I were you, I'd delay the kid's release for as long as you possibly can or at least until Jax is free of this mess. Hale will look like an even bigger piece of shit if he goes after a sick kid."

That Tara could do. "In the meantime," and she gestured towards the corpse on display before them. "We have Cameron Hayes."

"Who the hell is Cameron Hayes?"

Grinning, she told him smugly, "he's Jax's 'get out of jail free' card."

Frowning and unamused, Unser requested, "care to elaborate?"

"Last night, Cameron Hayes was anonymously dropped off outside of the hospital with two slugs in his ass. He died from septic shock not long after. Running his prints and photo this morning revealed not only his name, but we also learned that he's Real IRA and wanted on four continents."

"Jesus Christ," Unser swore, running a slightly shaking hand over his balding head. It was a nervous gesture. Meeting Tara's eyes, he asked, "how exactly is this supposed to help Jax?"

"Do you really think that Stahl's supervisors will allow her to continue playing games with Jax when she has the death of an IRA member to investigate?"

He backed away, started to pace. "Does Samcro know about this? Clay? Gemma?"

"Considering I'm pretty sure they're the ones who dropped him off, I'd say the chances are good," Tara answered curtly yet, at the same time, evasively as well. While she didn't lie to Unser, she also didn't tell him the whole truth – how Gemma had come to her for help in saving Cameron Hayes' life, how the club had no idea that Cameron was dead and that the hospital had already identified him. Tara had made sure to keep everything as hush-hush as possible after putting the pieces together the night before. And, while the chief might feel differently, frankly, she didn't care what Samcro, Clay, or Jax's mother knew or didn't know about the situation.

After a few minutes, Unser stopped his agitated movements and came to stand across from Tara once more. "Alright. I'll be back. I need to go into the station, get the ball rolling on this. In the meantime," he instructed her. "This stays between just you and me. Got it?"

"I understand."

The chief sighed and shook his head as though he was already exhausted despite the fact that it wasn't even noon yet, but he moved to leave, nonetheless, only pausing once he reached the double doors, turning around to curiously study Tara. "Want to tell me why you requested a copy of John Teller's accident report this morning?"

Tara was prepared for his question, though she had thought it would come from Gemma (who heard about it from Unser) rather than the cop himself. "For Abel's medical file."

Unser's face screwed up with confusion and doubt. "Why?"

Without even looking in the police officer's direction, Tara answered his question while pushing Cameron Hayes' body back inside the freezer and slamming the door shut. "I'm very thorough, and it should have been there already to corroborate the findings of his death certificate."

"Right," Unser drawled, sounding as if he was stuck somewhere between belief and skepticism. "I'll see you later, Doc."

"Thanks, Chief."

Despite the fact that the man spoke under his breath, she could still hear him. "Don't thank me yet."

As Tara watched Unser leave, she found herself considering him in a different light. While she hadn't been able to go over the entire accident report, she knew that he had been the officer on scene, the investigating officer, and the one to complete the report. Given his relationship with the club, Tara knew this meant something, and, now, she was afraid that, in trusting the chief, she and Jax had made a miscalculation. A mistake or not, it was too late. That card had already been played.

…

With Abel's case, Tara was walking a tightrope. If she delayed his move to the nursery for too long, her coworkers would become suspicious, her actions put under review; if she pushed him forward too quickly, she could risk losing him to Hale's machinations. Plus, by transferring Abel out of the NICU, Tara would relinquish not only some of her control over his case but also lose her ability to monitor his visitors as closely as she currently was. She was already under close scrutiny because of her obvious emotional attachment to the baby and his father. The last thing she, Abel, or Jax needed was for Tara to be removed from his case entirely. Given everything she needed to consider, Tara knew what she had to do.

Her first step was to ask for a consult from a sleep apnea specialist. While Abel's case wasn't severe, given his medical history and birth complications, Tara was justified in her concern. The fact that sleep apnea was not a very popular specialty, however, meant that it could take a little while to find the right doctor to make the trip into Charming to examine Abel. That bought her some time... and, in the long run, some peace of mind as well. Then, despite all of the little boy's progress, there was also the worry that he was still slightly underweight and a somewhat fussy eater. She planned on ordering formula trials in an attempt to discover what fit his taste and needs. In the meantime, however, Abel was being transferred from the NICU into the regular nursery. In Tara's best estimation, her plan was the optimal compromise. She'd just have to increase her vigilance.

As Tara made her way down the neonatal hallway and towards the regular maternity wing, she made sure that Abel's blanket was tightly tucked around his small body. If ever there was a baby who appreciated a competent swaddling, it was Abel Teller. He squirmed in her arms but didn't wake. With every step, she counted his breaths; with every one of his healthy respirations, she breathed just that much easier herself. It was hard to let go. Her affection for the baby boy had gone well past a mere attachment. But it was what was best for Abel, and that's all that mattered.

The door to the nursery was open, but that wasn't a surprise, for it often was. Between nurses, doctors, and parents going in and out to check in on the little ones, it was actually quieter to just leave the door ajar than to to be constantly opening and shutting it. Having already prepared an open incubator for Abel before she went to transfer him, Tara knew exactly where she was going, so, as her feet whispered soundlessly across the tile floor, she just took one last moment to stare down at the child in her arms. She smiled softly at his button nose; his full, baby bottom lip; his fine, silky lashes that laid so peacefully against the round apples of his plump cheeks.

"Hey, Little Man," Tara whispered, gently placing him in his incubator. "You're not going to be so lonely in here now. You'll have all these other babies to keep you company." Leaning over, Tara reached out to carefully adjust Abel's Sons of Anarchy beanie. It had gotten slightly loose when she slid her left arm out from underneath his neck upon laying him down. "I'll let you in on a little secret, though: you'll always be my favorite patient, but don't tell anyone, okay?"

"So, _that's _why."

Startled, Tara spun around, her hand lifting to clutch nervously at her ID. She came face to face with a smirking, smug Agent June Stahl who was lounged against the far wall in a corner, obviously keeping herself out of the way so that she could observe – spy – without detection, lying in wait to pounce when it was the most advantageous to her agenda. And Tara had no doubt that she had an agenda. However, she wouldn't allow the other woman to get the upper hand. She couldn't.

Rolling her shoulders back and tilting her chin up at a belligerent angle, she demanded to know, "why what?"

"Why you're staying in this one horse town."

Offering the other woman a fake smile, Tara said, "I don't follow."

Stahl pushed off the wall, sauntered towards her. "You're free, Doctor Knowles. Kohn's gone. You ran, and, when that didn't work, you cozied up to the local badass and got him to do your dirty work for you."

Folding her arms over her chest, Tara argued, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Stahl ignored her. "What I don't understand, however, is why you're still here – at St. Rednecks... or, at least, I didn't until just now."

"Is there something you actually want," she pressed, raising a pointed brow in tandem with her impatient tone and words, "or are you just here to harass me, because, frankly, I have better things to do than listen to your cynical theories. Not all of us, Agent Stahl, are as self-serving and disillusioned as you are."

"Apparently," the Fed gushed with faux enthusiasm. "Imagine, the little girl nobody wanted growing up and making something of herself... only to throw it all away for love."

"So, what you're saying is that a woman can't have both – love and a career?"

"What, here at the Hillbilly Hospital," the other woman scoffed. "Not likely." Before Tara could respond, Stahl continued, "but I was wrong about one thing – _who _you love, so maybe I'm wrong about having it all, too."

Realizing what the Fed was driving at, Tara decided to just ignore her. She turned around, presenting Stahl with her back, and picked up the nearest chart. Acting engrossed in what she was reading, Tara hoped the other woman would take the hint and just leave. Stahl wanted to talk about Abel, about Tara's bond with the baby, and then threaten the child's welfare in order to pressure Tara into rolling on Samcro. It was an obvious ploy – one that she had been anticipating, but it still disgusted her. And pissed her off.

Stahl wasn't one to take a hint, though, so she pushed forward... which told Tara that she was starting to get a little desperate. "And here I thought you were throwing away your career for a piece of ass, but that's not it at all, is it? You're still destroying your reputation for a biker thug, but it's not the current prince you're giving everything up for but the next generation. His son."

She bit her bottom lip in an effort to remain quiet, to stifle her instinct to just lay into the ATF agent, but it didn't work. Frankly, Tara did not care what June Stahl thought of her, about her career, about her motivations. But to dismiss Jax and his son, to automatically assume that Abel would never be anything more than another club member, to cheapen the first real and meaningful relationships Tara was a part of since her mother died? That she just couldn't allow.

Spinning around on the heels of her tennis shoes, she narrowed her eyes in disgusted observation, sneered. "Does this usually work? Are people actually intimidated by you? Because, from where I'm standing, you're just a pathetic, lonely, _small _woman who thinks she has to overcompensate for the fact that she's not a man." Shaking her head in mock sympathy, Tara mused, "that's just sad."

Stahl licked her lips and scrunched her face up briefly in an attempt to retain possession of her composure. "At least I'm not the one who has to lay on her back to get power."

"But didn't you," Tara taunted. The female agent stared at her for several seconds, reading the intent behind Tara's pointed gaze, before finally blinking and glancing away. Taking that as the edge it was, Tara advanced forward, stalking towards her opponent. She tossed the chart she had been holding onto a nearby rocker before casually dropping her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. Voice muted with fury, with threat, with pity, she said, "you know nothing about me, but go ahead. Run your mouth about my past, about my career. I don't care. But don't you dare presume to know anything about Jax, his son, or how I feel about either of them, because you're incapable of understanding anything pure, selfless, or beautiful."

"Let's see how pure and beautiful your relationship is six months from now when Jax is serving a life sentence, his brat is a ward of the state, and you're sharing your hot piece of biker ass with his..."

"Well, isn't this cozy," a third voice interrupted. If it belonged to anyone else, Tara would have been grateful for the reprieve from Agent Stahl's hateful venom, but adding Gemma to their confrontation was just going to throw gas on the fire. "It sure as hell didn't take you long to sell out my son, Doc. What did this ATF bitch promise you in return?"

"Gemma, it's not what it looks like."

"Oh, you mean like how, despite what it looked like, you didn't twist Jax up and pull him away from his family?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Tara could see Stahl eagerly taking in every bitter word and dirty glance Gemma lobbed in her direction. Realizing she needed to diffuse the situation as quickly and as cleanly as possible, she didn't fight back or defend herself. "I really don't think this is something we should be talking about right now."

Gemma slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, leaning forward slightly as she said, "and I don't really care what you think, you stupid, little gash. Do you think I'm just going to stand by and allow you to rat on _my _son?"

Voice devoid of any feeling whatsoever, Tara replied – face impassive, "there's nothing to rat on."

Jax's mother took a step towards her, but then Stahl spoke for the first time since Gemma entered the nursery. "Now, _this _is interesting." Before Tara shot her gaze in the female agent's direction, she watched as Gemma did the same. "So, I take it we're not all one big, happy family, huh?" She quirked her brows and grinned. "I can use that," Stahl remarked – interest piqued and pleased with the development – before sauntering out of the room, never once glancing back.

Tara waited until she knew for certain that the Fed was gone before whispering, "I know you don't trust me, Gemma, and that we don't like each other very much, but we can't keep doing this. It's not helping anybody."

"You want to help," Gemma asked her without waiting for an answer. "Then get out of Charming. Pack your shit, and leave my family alone."

"That's not going to happen."

"Then we have a problem, and you don't like how I deal with problems, Doc. Remember?"

Unfazed by the threat, Tara tried once more to reassure the older woman. "I'm not going to turn on Jax, Gemma. I'm not going to rat him out, and I'm not going to abandon him or Abel. Hale and the ATF are just trying to intimidate us. They want to use Abel against Jax and I, so we can't give them any more ammunition than they already have. Until Jax is in the clear, you and I need to find a way to, if not work together, then at least not make things worse. Can you at least..."

The shrill ring of a cell phone going off cut into Tara's plea for cooperation. Without looking away from her, Gemma answered the call. Tara observed in confusion as Jax's mother smirked. Gone immediately was the animosity she had blown into the room wielding like a weapon and, in its place, was a sudden and unexpected conceit that didn't make any sense. Gemma then ended the call without saying a word, a quick flick of her wrist snapping the device closed. "Listen up, Doc, and listen well. There is no us; there is no you and Jax. As for my grandson, he's none of your god damned concern. You're not family, and Abel already has a mother. You're just a stranger – an outsider, and don't you ever forget it."

Without waiting for a response, Gemma pivoted around and strode confidently out of the nursery. The dismissal, the abrupt departure? Tara didn't find them to be shocking or suspicious. Really, it was par for the course as far as their interaction with each other went. But what she did find curious was Gemma's absolute lack of interest in Abel. She never approached her grandson, never tried to hold him. In fact, Tara wasn't even sure if Gemma had realized that Abel had been transferred out of the NICU.

Sudden distress spiking, she immediately took off for the nearest elevator, already readying her ID card to swipe it for entrance. Ignoring the curious stares, Tara ran through the hall, dashing around coworkers and patients alike. The lift felt like it was barely moving as she descended several floors on her way to the basement. Before the doors were even completely open, she was slipping through the heavy metal, once more jogging towards her destination. Practically simultaneously, she slid her card through the reader and pushed open the double morgue doors, her distress transforming into dread and settling into the pit of her stomach. It took only a few long strides to reach the freezer door she needed. Tara cranked it out and then pulled, reaching blindly inside to grab the tray and roll it forward. It traveled smoothly, because, as she feared, it was now empty.

"God damn it, Gemma!"

Slamming the door into the tray, she forced it to slide back inside, already reaching for her cell phone. Tara knew exactly how Samcro had learned of Cameron Hayes' death and subsequent identification, but that didn't change the fact that she had to report the missing corpse. When Unser picked up on the other end of the line, she kicked out in rage, the impact of her foot and leg colliding with the unyielding metal of the storage freezers sending a jarring ping of pain up to her hip, but Tara needed the physical distraction to maintain her composure. Dirty and disloyal or not, Charming's Chief was still a better option than the town's second in command. Foregoing pleasantries, Tara got right to the point. "We have a problem."

…

"You need to reign in that doctor pussy of yours, son."

Tara had been so focused on seeing Jax, on finally getting to talk to him after everything that had happened that day that, at first, she didn't even hear Clay... or his disgusting words. And she certainly didn't need Jax's confirmation of the other man's identity to know that it was Clay speaking either. Just before she was going to turn the corner of the hallway and reveal her presence to those in – and visiting – the cells, Tara came to a sudden stop. The pizza box she was carrying jammed into the cement block wall, but neither man seemed to hear her over the volume of their own voices. Grateful, Tara took a deep yet silent breath of relief.

"Don't you ever talk about Tara like that," Jax warned his step-father. "And I am not your _son_."

"Yeah, no shit," Clay fired back, disgust lacing his tone. "Because no son of mine would ever put anything or anyone above the club."

"Oh, you mean the dead Irishman," Jax questioned. The sudden shift in his mood – going from dangerous and confrontational to taunting and confident almost to the point of condescension – made Tara yearn to see his face. She had to dig a corner of the pizza box into her abdomen to keep herself planted out of sight. "Tara and I decided that together." She could practically hear the smug grin coloring Jax's words.

Suddenly, the sound of metal rattling against metal split the stillness. As Clay's words climbed above the commotion, Tara realized he was holding onto the bars that separated him from Samcro's VP and shaking them as hard as he could. "You did what? You're a fucking..."

Clay didn't get to finish his insult; he didn't get to complete his threat. And Tara would never know what was going to come out of the older man's mouth next, because the announcement Jax made after cutting Clay off was powerful enough that Clay himself wouldn't remember or revisit his previous thought. "Guns are dead. They're going to stay that way. And Unser needed something to push out Hale, his ATF bitch, and their case against me."

"I'll have your kutte for this." It was a promise, and Clay spoke it in a deceptively calm and rational voice that made Tara realize she preferred when the contemptible, cruel man was in a rage and overreacting. The heat of his fury didn't sting as harshly as the calculating menace of his detachment. In that moment, Tara realized just how dangerous Clay Morrow really was. The rational part of her brain knew that her realization should have sent her running in the opposite direction, but, in fact, it just made that much more determined to protect and defend the people she cared about. "You're a disgrace to your club and a disappointment to your mother. Letting the god damn Feds take your kutte from you? You don't deserve..."

"Actually," Tara interjected. While Clay disparaged against Jax, she had strode forward, coming up to stand slightly behind the older man and off to his left. Dropping the still warm pizza box onto the floor, she folded her arms across her chest in challenge as she waited for Clay to turn around and face her. And he did exactly that, a snarl already, permanently, on his lined with age and hard living, spiteful face. "I have Jax's kutte." After Jax shot Kohn, they could hear the sirens already in the distance, but Jax also knew that, because Charming didn't have a crime or forensic lab of their own, it would be until at least the next morning before either Hale could borrow a tech team from Lodi or Stahl could get somebody sent up from her Stockton field office. So, they had used those few minutes to do what they could to help their situation – destroying as much evidence as they could, hiding what they couldn't destroy, and staging everything else for when Tara would come back to collect some clothes. "It's safe."

Clay leaned forward, got in Tara's face. Although she was startled and uncomfortable with his close proximity, she wouldn't allow him to see that, and she sure as hell didn't back down. Ticking her chin up several notches, Tara confronted him with as much aplomb as she could muster in the presence of the president of Samcro's wrath. "For now," Clay bit out in a threat before pushing past her – his shoulder knocking hers and causing Tara to rock on her feet – and stalking away.

As soon as she heard the door slamming behind him, Tara was turning to Jax, a question already bubbling forth off her lips. "Are you okay?" But he wouldn't meet her eyes, and he didn't respond. Instead, she found his gaze locked upon her right shoulder... the very same place where Clay had purposely collided with her. Raising her voice and infusing it with a tinge of panic, she tried to gain his attention. "Jax!" He blinked several times before finally looking up at her face. Repeating her question, she pressed, "are you okay, Jax?"

"Me," he questioned incredulously. "I'm more worried about you."

"I'm fine; I'm not the one at odds with their own MC."

Jax scoffed. "Oh, Clay's pissed off at you, too. He blames you for Cameron Hayes. While there are rules in place that protect me, there's nothing to stop him from coming after you."

Tara tried to argue, "Jax, if Clay's willing to target women, if he's willing to kill his own best friend, then no rule is going to keep you safe."

Out of instinct, Jax surveyed their surroundings, making sure they were alone before leaning in close and asking, "you found something?"

"No," Tara answered, and she watched as his face fell from a complicated mixture of regret, disappointment, and relief. "But that's the problem. That police report is embarrassingly incompetent."

"What do you mean?"

"It lists your dad's information, where the accident happened, the road conditions, general measurements and observations pertaining to his bike's movements following impact, and that he was hit by a semi," Tara ticked off the points on her right fingers. "But it doesn't tell me anything about the other driver – his name, his license plate, who he worked for. There's no contact information for him, his employer, or his insurance company. The report doesn't say whether or not there was a suspicion of drugs or alcohol being involved. Forget witness testimony. Other than that one line, somebody reading that report who didn't already know what happened would have believed your father was in a single vehicle accident." Before Jax could respond, Tara added one last piece of information. "And here's the kicker: guess who was the investigating officer."

"Unser."

"That man might have his faults as a cop, but he's not incompetent."

"He was also the one who told Clay about Cameron Hayes, wasn't he," Jax asked, though Tara could tell by the tone of his voice that he already knew the answer.

"Or your mother," Tara responded, shrugging in uncertainly. "While I'm not sure who Unser told, I do know she's involved. While they snuck the body out, she cornered me and started a fight in front of Stahl."

"Jesus Christ!" Jax bowed his head, scrubbing his hands over his face in agitation, in exasperation.  
"Yeah, so Stahl knows that your mother and I don't get along."

"Which means she also realizes that you're not protected by the club." Moving suddenly with desperation, Jax glanced back up – blue eyes wide, hands reaching out to tensely grip the bars of his cell. "This needs to end. I need to get out of here _now._ This entire situation is spinning out of control, and I can't do anything to diffuse it – or keep you safe from it – while I'm locked in here."

Folding her hands over top of his, Tara tried to reassure him. "I'm being careful, Jax. I'm staying at the hospital, and I'm carrying my gun. You don't have to worry about me, but you do need to start worrying about yourself." Lowering her voice for emphasis, she said, "you practically declared war on Clay earlier; you did declare war on running guns."

"Not everyone shares Clay's ideas about the club and the guns," he told her. "Some of the guys – Piney for sure, probably Bobby, and I'm thinking Juice, too, they'll back me."

"But back you in what, Jax?" She didn't have to say anything else for them both to know what she was asking: what was his next move? How did he want to handle the club, Clay? If not gun runners, then what would Samcro be?

Jax shrugged. In his confusion and indecision, he seemed to deflate, coming to lean his entire body against the bars and closer to her. With his forehead resting against the cool metal of his cell door and his conflicted gaze entangled with Tara's own questioning, green eyes, Jax confessed, "I'm not sure yet, Tara."

She didn't say anything. Instead, she just bent forward to press a delicate kiss against Jax's right wrist. Their dinner forgotten, they just stood there together, lost in their own thoughts.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

Everything seemed to be falling apart.

First, Cameron Hayes' body _disappeared_. Although the dead Irishman, wanted on four continents for his involvement with the real IRA, had been identified and the police notified prior to his corpse being stolen from the hospital, Tara wasn't sure how much the case would help Jax. True, Hayes was a bigger whale, but there was no body now... which made it damn near impossible to investigate his murder. Despite his loyalty to Clay and Gemma, Unser had reported the death before allowing Samcro to abscond with the body, but Tara had no idea if that was enough to make the ATF pull Stahl off of Jax's case, which would, in turn, pretty much insure that he'd be set free. Without Federal support, Hale wouldn't last long in his vendetta against Jax and the MC; he just didn't have enough evidence or pull on his own. Tara did not like the uncertainty, however.

Then, there was tension between Jax and Clay; between Jax and his best friend, Opie; between Jax and his club; and between Tara and practically everyone in his life except for Abel. And, while Tara could admit, at least to herself, that she loved Abel like her own child, the bond between them did nothing to keep either of them safe. In fact, it probably made Abel more vulnerable, and it was definitely one of the main reasons why Gemma loathed her. True, the feeling was mutual. She hated Jax's mother with the same intensity as Gemma hated her, but Tara and Gemma were wired entirely different. She wasn't rash, or confrontational, and she certainly didn't act first and then think about what she did afterwards. While Tara could be just as vindictive and cruel as Gemma, she was meticulous; Gemma, in her impulsivity, was reckless and unpredictable – a danger to them all.

And, now, to cap off everything else that was going wrong, Abel's sleep apnea was dissipating to the point where Tara had been forced to cancel her consult request with the specialist. While she was truly grateful for the progress the little boy was making – pleased with how strong and resilient he was, with every step forward Abel took, he came that much closer to being out of her care and released from the relative safety of the hospital. If Jax was still in jail when Abel was sent home, Tara wasn't sure what extreme Hale would go to in his attempt to use Jax to hurt Samcro. It was one thing to call in favors to get a man convicted of murder when there was proof of self-defense and entrapment working for the accused. A judge couldn't afford that kind of bad publicity, especially if he ever wanted to be re-elected. But to take a child away from his junkie mother and his incarcerated father and make him a ward of the state? That was a whole hell of a lot easier to justify with the press and with constituents. Hale might not be powerful enough to sentence an innocent man to death, but he held enough sway to take Abel from them.

Shaking those thoughts away, Tara knew she couldn't let her panic take over. She needed to remain focused. Plus, Abel wasn't being released that day. She still had at least another twenty-four hours to come up with a plan, to strategize, to keep the little boy who meant so much to her safe while she still could. Needing to reassure herself that Abel was just fine and wanting to offer him the same comfort, she decided to delay starting her shift and spend the morning with Abel. She'd feed him, bathe him, change and dress him before rocking him back to sleep... only, when she stepped into the nursery, someone else was already taking care of the baby.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Wendy Teller looked up from the child in her arms, smirked, and said, "I'm taking care of _my _son." While her tone was completely serene, Tara could hear the confrontation lurking purposefully behind the composure.

"You shouldn't be here."

Wendy chuckled. "Yeah, Gemma said you were even more full of yourself than you were before. I didn't think that was possible, but it looks like Gemma was right."

Ignoring the insult, Tara questioned, "and did Gemma tell you that she's not even allowed to visit her own grandson without supervision? Either Jax needs to be with her or I do when she comes to see Abel. I think Jax would agree that the same rules need to apply to you, too."

Instead of answering, Wendy posed her own inquiry, "speaking of Jax, where is _my _husband?"

For a moment, Tara froze. Instinctively, she just knew that they did not want nor need for Wendy to learn about Jax's incarceration, but she also didn't want to lie either. So, settling for a half truth, she squared her shoulders and responded, "he usually spends the night here with Abel."

"And how is he doing?"

"Well, he's out of the NICU, so obviously he's getting better. Stronger." Tara knew that Wendy had not been asking about her son, but she also wanted to take any opportunity she could to remind the other woman what she had done to her own child. In Wendy's absence, Tara had almost forgotten about her, about her claims to both the man Tara was sleeping with and the baby she was caring for like he was her own. Because Wendy had long since stopped being a consideration for Tara, her sudden reappearance caught her off guard and made her feel extremely awkward, uneasy, and troubled.

"I meant Jax," Wendy snapped, finally showing some cracks in her feigned self-possession.

"He's fine."

"Two words," the other woman pointed out, raising her finely sculpted brows in challenge. "Is that because I make you nervous and you don't want to tell me anything, or is it because Jax has already tired of you and tossed you aside?"

Not even acknowledging either insinuation, Tara crossed the room, bent over slightly, and held her arms out for Wendy to transfer Abel to her. "Give him to me." Once she held Abel, Tara chastised, "you can't just shove a bottle in his mouth and then ignore him. When you feed a baby, you have to pay attention – make sure that they're actually eating, that they don't choke, and you have to periodically stop to burp them."

Still sitting in the rocker, Wendy replied, "I might not know everything about taking care of a baby, but I can learn."

"I think right now you should be focusing on your sobriety."

"And I am," the other woman assured her, finally standing up. She took several steps towards Tara and Abel, coming to stand directly in front of them. There was no way to interpret her actions but as a threat. "I completed my rehab problem, and now I'm moving into a sober living facility, but, before I go, I wanted to spend some time with _my _son. Because I am going to be a part of his life, Tara."

Once more, she didn't address what Wendy said. Engaging with the other woman would just encourage her or, worse, make Wendy think that she had managed to rattle Tara. The less she said, the less ammunition she gave Jax's soon-to-be ex-wife. "I think it's time for you to leave."

"Alright, I'll leave," Wendy agreed, stepping away to grab her purse and toss it over her shoulder. "But I will be back."

Dismissing the other woman by turning her back on her, Tara gave all her focus to the baby in her arms. "I won't let her hurt you – not again," she vowed, pressing her lips against Abel's impossibly soft forehead. "I won't let anyone hurt you. That's a promise."

…

The precinct was in pandemonium. Since the morning after Jax's arrest, Tara had avoided the place during regular business hours, electing to sneak in early or wait until night fell and there was only a skeleton crew working. But Wendy's sudden return to town was too suspicious, too potentially risky, for Tara to wait and tell Jax when it was more convenient and less of a hassle. However, that certainly didn't mean that she was going to announce her presence or alert any more people than necessary.

As she stuck to the perimeter of the room – trying to blend in, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, Tara observed the utter chaos surrounding her. Unser, Hale, and Stahl were caught in a battle of wills – Unser insisting that their focus needed to be on the missing dead man, that it was his station, that it was his case, that it was his call; Hale wanted to continue pursuing Jax, claiming that, in doing so, their investigation would inevitably lead back to the Irishman; and Stahl was simply trying to remain in control, her frustration with both men evident, especially when Hale tried to not so subtly use their more personal connection to his benefit. In the confusion that ensued, there were at least a dozen cops and agents circling the argument, waiting for instructions, waiting to see who would emerge victorious and finally tell them what to do. It was an exercise in futility, in incompetence.

Heading towards the evidence locker and where Charming PD had a guard posted at a desk before the hallway which led back into the cells, Tara hoped that she'd find the same woman who had helped her procure John Teller's accident report. While perhaps not the most ambitious of cops, the woman seemed resigned to the delicate balance that existed between Samcro and law enforcement. She was neither a zealot in her pursuit of the club like Hale, nor was she essentially on the Sons' payroll like Unser, and Tara could work with that middle ground. It made the other woman reasonable and capable of compromise.

"Good morning, Officer Eglee."

"Hi, Doctor Knowles," the cop returned, though she didn't look at Tara. Instead, her attention was firmly locked on the battle of wills taking place in the center of the bullpen. "Here to see Jax?"

"Yes... if that's alright?"

"Go ahead back," the other woman instructed.

"What about signing in," Tara asked. She appreciated Officer Eglee's pragmatism and didn't want to be the reason she was reprimanded.

"I'm more worried about what's going on out here than I am anything you two could get up to back there," the police officer replied honestly. "I'd rather break the rules this once than take my eyes off Agent Stahl even for the few minutes it would require to grab the log book." Meeting Tara's gaze just for a fleeting second, Officer Eglee admitted, "I don't trust that woman."

"That makes two of us."

"Just don't stay back there too long, okay," the cop requested.

"I won't," she reassured. "I need to get back to the hospital soon anyway."

Eglee nodded once, the acknowledgement brisk. "Have a good day, Doctor Knowles."

"You, too... and thanks."

Already heading for the hallway which would take her back towards the cells, Tara glanced over her shoulder, but the female police officer was already absorbed once more in her quiet yet intense observation, the worry she felt for her boss and her precinct clouding her features. While Tara hoped that everything worked out for the other woman – after all, it would serve Jax and Abel better that way as well, she, frankly, had more important things on her mind than some pissing contest between law enforcement.

Rounding the final corner, Tara didn't make the effort to disguise her approaching steps. Despite the melee that was the rest of the station, it was quiet in the cells, so she knew Jax was alone, and she didn't have to worry about interrupting something or needing to stay silent in order to hide her presence. "Jax, we have another..."

Her words died away when she heard Jax gasp and watched as his body jerked awake. He had been asleep, sitting up and leaning against the cold, cement block wall before she arrived, but her sudden appearance startled him awake. As she approached the bars of his cell, Tara observed Jax blink several times as he struggled to regain his bearings, his eyes finally opening wide as he forced awareness to return. While Jax lifted his hands to his face to rub his bleary features, she offered a murmured, "sorry."

"It's a'ight." The reassurance was accompanied by a rather powerful yawn.

"No, it's not," Tara argued. "You're exhausted."

"I'll sleep once I'm out of here and I know that you and Abel are safe."

"Yeah, well, who knows when that will be." She hated to be so pessimistic, but Tara also knew that they had to be practical. "In the meantime, you need to be sharp, so try and get some sleep, Jax. Please."

"This isn't the most comfortable of beds, babe."

Offering him a very meaningful glance, Tara lobbed back, "if you can sleep in the bunkhouse, you can sleep here."

Jax smirked but stood. He stretched, causing his t-shirt to ride up slightly. It was another plain white one. At least while he was in lockup, it was best if Jax didn't wear the Samcro colors or insignias. So, when Unser had asked her to pick up a few things for Jax the day after he had been arrested, she had grabbed just the basics from his house, using his keys he had left with her before being arrested, and packed him a small bag. It wasn't the Ritz, but it wasn't the state pen either, and Jax had a daily opportunity to shower in a small, private bathroom inside of the precinct. As he strolled towards her, she noticed that his hair was still slightly damp. "What's up? Not that I'm complaining, but why are you here?"

Getting straight to the problem, she told him, "Wendy's back."

"Shit." Jax's lids fell, shielding his clear blue eyes from her, and he shook his head several times in regret, eventually letting it fall to connect with the metal of his cell. With his hands wrapped tightly around the bars, he leaned towards her. Several moments later, he glanced up, asking, "she left rehab?"

Tara shrugged, because all she had to go on was Wendy's word. "She said she was released, that she finished the program."

"So, two months and suddenly she's cured?"

As the daughter of an alcoholic, Tara knew it was never that easy, that there was no _cure_, yet she wouldn't lie to herself or Jax. "She was clean, poised. Even when I took Abel away from her, she didn't lose her cool. I'm not saying that she isn't a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, but right now... with everything else going on – Abel about to be released; you in jail; the mess with Clay and the club; Kohn, the ATF, and now the dead Irishman?"

"And don't forget Gemma," he added. Tara could see the wheels turning in Jax's mind. "She hates you, and she's pissed at me. Who knows what she would do if she felt she was backed into a corner." Tara had a feeling Gemma had already made her first move – that she was responsible for Wendy's sudden reappearance in Charming and Abel's life, but she had no proof of that – just her suspicions, so she kept them to herself. "Did Wendy say what she wanted, why she was here?"

"She just said that she wanted to spend some time with her son before moving into a sober living facility."

"And when is she doing that," Jax pressed.

Tara shook her head, unsure. "I don't know." She had been so caught off guard by Wendy showing up at St. Thomas that she knew, during their little confrontation, she hadn't been thinking straight. Her main objective had just been to get Abel away from his addict of a mother. Needing to know how to proceed, Tara queried, "what do you want me to do now? How can I help?"

Jax's eyes darted back and forth as he mentally worked through the situation, considered her questions. Finally, he said, "get in touch with my lawyer. Tell him we need to meet, because I want to set up guardianship for Abel. If I'm not out before he's released, I need to make sure that he's taken care of."

"I can do that," Tara promised. And she would. What Jax had asked of her was probably something they should have done for his son as soon as he had been arrested – perhaps even before that given how unpredictable Jax's life was.

"How are you?"

"What," Tara questioned, caught off guard by the inquiry. She was so focused on Abel, so focused on what their next step needed to be, that, quite honestly, she was her own last concern. "Me? I'm not the one locked up."

Jax stood up straight, shuffled closer to the cell door so that only the bars were keeping them from really touching. He angled his head, seemed to be practically examining her. "Babe, don't take this the wrong way, but you look... scared. Sad. Haunted."

She was all those things and more. Sighing, Tara knew she couldn't, wouldn't, lie to him. By not confiding in him when they first started to get to know one another, Tara had almost pushed Jax away, and, maybe if she had been more forthright in the very beginning, they wouldn't find themselves in their current mess; perhaps the situation with Kohn could have been resolved differently. Better. "I'm not sleeping well."

"And who could blame you," Stahl's unexpected and very unwelcome voice rang out, startling Tara. Glancing over her shoulder, she found the other woman lounged in the doorway to the cells, her hip and shoulder propping her up, while her arms were crossed confidently over her chest. "It can't be easy being Helen of Charming – the woman who divided Samcro." Though the words were spoken with feigned sympathy and compassion, the sentiments behind them were anything but.

Jax remained silent – not giving the agent the satisfaction of rising to her bait, so Tara followed his lead... even going so far as to turn her back upon the Fed. That didn't deter Stahl, however. "I won't stay long; I don't want to interrupt. But I did want to give you a little food for thought." After a brief pause to allow for her words to sink in, Stahl continued, "I know that neither of you are willing to cooperate, but what's to stop the club from thinking that Tara turned, especially once Jax is released? Because, whether David wants to admit it or not, we will be cutting you loose soon, Jax. But everybody knows that you killed Kohn, so, when we don't press any charges, they're not going to understand why, because we made sure to keep all those other details – Chicago, the bullet-proof vest, the absolute lack of physical evidence – under wraps. The only thing that will make sense is that Tara cut a deal for your freedom – that she gave up the club in exchange for you. And, when that happens, Samcro will turn on you, and you'll be left without options, because, once you're released, my offer to help keep you safe is off the table."

"We'll take our chances," Jax bit out. Tara noticed that he was barely holding onto his temper, Stahl's not so veiled threats hitting their mark.

"Suit yourselves," the agent responded casually. Without looking, Tara heard the other woman's feet shuffling as she stood up straight, her heels clicking against the cement floor. "But don't blame me when one or both of you end up in shallow graves out on 44."

Stahl's steps beat out a steady tattoo as she sauntered away, the volume fading until the point where silence greeted them once again. Tara listened to her leave with mixed feelings. While she never liked being in the female agent's presence, Tara also feared what Jax's reaction would be to the warnings. Because they weren't empty. There was validity to what Stahl was claiming would happen once Jax was let go, but that didn't mean she trusted the ATF any more than she trusted Clay and Gemma.

"This is why I want you staying at my place," Jax told her, recapturing Tara's attention. She met his imploring gaze, and he must have been able to read the question in her eyes, because he explained, "it sends a message."

"What kind of message?"

"That you're mine," Jax answered bluntly. "That's you're protected. That you're not to be touched."

After Kohn, the territorial vein of his statements should have frightened her, set her on edge, but Tara could easily recognize the difference. Whereas Kohn's obsession had been selfish, Jax's possessiveness went both ways. Whereas, if she stayed in his house, he would be claiming her, he was also telling the world and, more importantly, his club that she had a claim on him, too. "I'll... I'll think about it," she promised him. And she meant it.

Jax didn't thank her. In fact, he didn't say anything in response. Rather, he just closed the scant amount of distance that separated them and fused their mouths together. It was less of a kiss and more of a connection, but Tara met his ferocity with her own desperation, needing the reassurance of touch to ground her. When they finally pulled away, she was breathless, her lips bruised, and her courage, if not emboldened, then at least heartened. With a parting grin, she left to go back to the hospital, to Abel, and to the next confrontation that awaited her.

…

As Tara walked down the hall, she rolled her neck, popping the tired and stiff joints. It had been a long surgery and one of her least favorite to perform – not because it was particularly difficult but because of the lasting side effects which often were an inevitable consequence of necrotizing enterocolitis. The patient would live, and that was the most important thing, but what would be their quality of life? In addition to resecting the bowel, they'd been forced to perform a colostomy. Perhaps it could be reversed in the future, but Tara wasn't optimistic. In fact, she was even more worried about the possibility of the child suffering from short bowel syndrome due to how much of the dead tissue they'd had to remove.

It was already late afternoon, but Tara still had another surgery scheduled for early that evening – an assist with a plastic surgeon on a cleft lip and palate case. What she really wanted was a bubble bath, a glass of wine, and a good book, but she didn't have enough time to leave the hospital, and she certainly couldn't have a drink. So, instead, she was planning on spending her small window of downtime with Abel. He was a welcome substitute.

First, though, she needed something to eat. While Jax had been right that night they ate dinner together on the loading dock – St. Thomas' cafeteria wasn't exactly fine dining, it was fast and convenient. Plus, as long as she stuck to the basics – more focus on the food prep and less on the actual cooking, even an industrial kitchen couldn't mess up too badly. So, she grabbed a salad and an apple before heading back up to the labor and delivery floor, promising herself that she'd pick up some takeout after she was finally done for the day.

Tara moved quickly – avoiding the busier parts of the hospital and her coworkers. Not only did she just want to sit down and relax for a few minutes, but she felt like she was being watched. Although she kept glancing over her shoulder, she never caught anyone blatantly following her or staring, yet that prickling sensation on the back of her neck, the goosebumps covering her arms, simply wouldn't go away. Tara tried telling herself that she was being ridiculous, but she knew this feeling; she recognized this feeling. It was eerily familiar. Kohn was gone, however; he was dead. No matter how many times Tara said those words silently in her own mind, though, the awareness and the foreboding wouldn't dissipate.

By the time the nursery was in her sight, Tara was close to canceling her assist. If she was this distracted in the OR, she'd be useless to her colleagues anyway. But then she saw Wendy, once more holding Abel, through the nursery's large observation window, and any trepidation she had been feeling disappeared. Briefly, Tara wondered if her anxiety had been the instinct that something was wrong with Abel, but she quickly dismissed that thought. Wendy pissed her off, and Tara could even admit that the other woman made her feel resentful, but she didn't dread Wendy.

"You're looking a little green there, Doc."

"Hello, Gemma," she returned, frowning. Without looking towards the woman who had sauntered up to stand beside her, Tara dropped her right ear towards her right shoulder – the crack that resulted from the movement sounding off in the otherwise quiet hallway like a shot.

"You seem tense," Jax's mother observed, a smile in her tone. "Is there something wrong?"

"It's just... been a long day." A long week. A long life. Masking her exhaustion, apprehension, and envy as much as she could, Tara finally moved so that she was facing Gemma. "Are you here to see Abel?"

"Nah, we'll let Wendy spend some time with him. They deserve the chance to bond with each other, don't you think, Doc?"

Yeah, she wasn't touching that loaded question. Instead, she posed one of her own, snorting in disbelief of the very idea. "So, then, what? _You're_ supervising?"

Gemma's dark eyes sparked with hatred, her features turned to stone. "It should be Jax here, introducing Abel to his mother, but you made damn sure that couldn't happen."

"What's that supposed to mean," Wendy inquired, walking towards them before coming to a stop, her arms folding over her chest. The gesture was both defensive and antagonistic at the same time.

"Frankly, it's none of your business, Wendy," Tara responded harshly before turning to the older woman beside her. "Gemma's just mouthing off and talking about things she knows nothing about." Lowering her tone and making it as hostile as possible, she encouraged, "aren't you, Gemma?"

Instead of falling in line, however, Gemma said to Wendy, "he's in jail, baby." The older woman was practically coddling in her faux concern for her soon-to-be ex-daughter-in-law.

"He's what," Wendy yelled, her ire directed at Tara. Briefly, she glanced around and found that several nurses and administrators were watching them closely. "I asked you about Jax this morning, and you didn't say anything about him being in jail."

Before Tara could respond, Gemma offered, "well, of course she wouldn't say anything, seeing as how she's responsible for him being there."

Tara took a step forward, tried to reach out and grab Wendy's arm in a reassuring gesture, but the other woman wrenched away from her touch. "It's all a misunderstanding," she covered. "He hasn't been charged with anything, and he'll be out soon. The cops..."

"Feds," Gemma interrupted. "ATF."

" … are just holding him for as long as they can. It's harassment and blatant abuse of power, but neither tactic is anything new."

"And what does this have to do with you," Wendy wanted to know.

Although her question was directed at Tara, it was Gemma who spoke up first, who jumped in before Tara could even form a thought, let alone an intelligible sentence. Gemma was the spider – it's web finished, just sitting there, waiting patiently for its prey. "It seems that the good doctor used to screw this crazy ATF agent. He followed her here, went after Abel, and Jax had to kill him."

"Gemma!" Vibrating with fury, she bit out on a whisper, "this is neither the time nor the place to talk about this. People are listening. Do you want to be the reason why Jax gets charged with murder? And Wendy cannot be trusted."

"Like you can," Gemma fired back – appalled, sneering. "Wendy's family. She's Jax's wife, Abel's mother." The older woman stepped into Tara's personal space, crowded her. "You're just some cheap, Fed whore who needs to learn her place."

"My place," Tara countered, not backing down from the confrontation. Her chin came up so she could meet Gemma glare for glare; she dropped the food she was holding, her hands lifting to emphasize her point. First, she stabbed her own chest, then she pointed to the spot on the floor directly beside her, and finally she gestured towards Abel's hospital room. "Is with Jax, is with his son."

"You're poison for my son, and Abel doesn't need you." Suddenly, Gemma took several steps back, her body language completely melting and softening when she moved to stand beside Wendy. "He needs his mother."

Tara watched as Wendy's eyes went wide with shock. "Since when?"

"I've made a lot of mistakes, baby," Gemma replied, reaching out to take one of Wendy's hands in both of her own. If Tara didn't know better, she'd think that the older woman was sincere, but Gemma was just a good actress. She knew exactly what to say and how to act in order to manipulate someone, but she also held grudges, was unforgiving, and never believed herself to be wrong. "After Abel was born, and he was so sick, I was scared. I just reacted instinctively – protecting my own... just like any mother would. But, afterwards, I realized that you're a mother, too, now, and you deserve a chance to protect what's yours as well."

"What exactly are you saying, Gemma," Wendy wanted to know.

"You need to fight for you family. You need to prove to Jax that you can be a good mother, a good old lady. You do this by staying, and, while Jax is in jail, you get temporary custody of Abel."

"Over my dead body," Tara vowed. Wendy looked up at the comment – shock towards Gemma's complete about-face and sudden support bleeding across her features, while Gemma herself glanced back over her shoulder – a corrupt, wrathful smirk twisting her face. "I will do whatever I have to in order to protect Jax and his little boy."

Without waiting for a response, Tara walked away. She went directly into the nursery, locked the door behind her, and picked up Abel, cradling him to her closely. If Gemma and Wendy wanted a war, that's exactly what they would get.

…

Perhaps she was just too tired to stay in the hospital one more night, maybe it was Jax's honest and heartfelt plea for her to stay at his house – the one thing she could do for him while he was behind bars for her, or it might have just been Tara's own pettiness coming out to play – knowing that it would annoy Gemma and hurt Wendy if she were to stay in the home the latter woman had once shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband, especially at Jax's behest, but, whatever the reason, as Tara made her way through the hospital that night and towards the back exit, she had every intention of driving to and then sleeping at Jax's house.

She hadn't even taken the time to shower after her final surgery of the night, electing to just scrub her hands and then grab her things, making a quick stop at the nursery, before leaving. She'd shower... or maybe she'd even take that bath... at Jax's. Tara would take her time, relax. She'd actually use the opportunity to unwind versus just clean up. And, while she didn't peg Jax for the wine drinking type, she wasn't a snob. Tara had nothing against beer and hard liquor. So, while relaxing in the tub, she'd have a drink as well.

Swiping her ID, she let herself out through the loading dock doors. While already striding forward, Tara repositioned the bag on her shoulder, adjusting it, because it was heavier and fuller than normal. Having stuffed in a change of clothes for the next day, her purse couldn't even be zipped. As she did so, Tara allowed the door to slam shut behind her, knowing the loud noise wouldn't disturb anybody – the patients too removed and the back parking lot otherwise empty... or so it should have been. It was just by luck – or perhaps it was instinct, all that time looking over her shoulder for Kohn – that Tara spotted the shadow moving and lurking about her car. At the sound of the loudly closing door, the unidentifiable person snapped to attention, their body angling towards her in observation. Tara froze, the keys she already held in her hand in preparation of leaving moving into a defensive position without her conscious thought. After what felt like an eternity but was really only a matter of seconds, the shadow melted into the night, and Tara was alone once more.

But the damage was done.

With what felt like a dozen pairs of eyes upon her, she turned and darted back towards the loading dock doors. Her hands were shaking when she tried to swipe her card, causing several misreadings before she finally managed to get her body under control. As soon as she was once more inside, Tara fell back against the doors in part relief, in part near paralyzing fear. Taking a quivering breath, she tried to convince herself that she had imagined the whole thing, that nothing was wrong, that no one was following her, but she wasn't a fanciful person; she didn't have an active imagination, and she didn't scare easily. Even after all of Kohn's harassment and torture, she was someone who kept her head in tough situations, who always remained in control.

Somebody had definitely been out there.

But maybe it was a coincidence – a homeless person looking for a secure place to spend the night, someone just passing through and using the lot as a shortcut. Hell, even the thought of someone looking to steal her car was preferable to the scenarios running through Tara's mind. Whatever was happening – a coincidence or something more sinister, however, she had to keep her cool. She couldn't afford to lose control, and Jax and Abel certainly couldn't afford for her to lose control either. She just had to be smart. She had to think ahead, and take precautions, and follow her instincts, and, right then, her instincts were telling her to just sleep one more night at the hospital.

Hopefully, everything would look better in the morning.


End file.
